No way to not automatically sync new items (files and folders) added to root

[sduensin]

This is kind of a special case and I understand the logic behind the current behavior. However, as is, selecting anything to selectively sync partially selects the root folder. Anything new added to the root folder is automatically selected and synchronized to the clients. For newly added files this makes perfect sense. For folders, however, it can be dangerous. Being able to ignore external storage is great but it's highly annoying to have the sync client add things on it's own and then try to run around and stop all the clients before it fills their disk.

[nshobe]

This apparently has been a known issue in the community for some time. Forum mentions go back a bit further even.

https://github.com/nextcloud/server/issues/3661

[Maxattax97]

My brother who uses my Nextcloud server was hotspotting with data, when a new (very large) folder began downloading in the background. This folder was inside the root directory, and was enabled by default in the client. I think this is a somewhat dangerous default, perhaps an setting in the UI would be best?

There are several issues related to this, and it's clear that this is a feature highly sought after.

27 #39 #110 #30

[AndrewBucklin]

This could be resolved with Files on demand #17. Newly added folders would show up locally as a "ghost" folder, but would only begin syncing content after the user enters the folder / subfolder (and optionally, only files up to a specified size limit).

[Apromixately]

I just ran into a similar issue. I wanted to synchronize only a subfolder which I had reduced to 1.4 MB but then Nextcloud reported it needed to download 600 MB. From what I can tell, the reason is that Nextcloud also wants to synchronize plain files in the parent folders. This sort of makes sense since there is no file-level selection of what to synchronize. Still, it's not really the behavior that I wanted. I think the root folder is a special case of this.

[Apromixately]

I think the problem mentioned by @Maxattax97 is also totally valid but a different issue. Here the problem is that new folders are automatically selected to be synchronized. Maybe the default should be "if the parent folder is selected it should be added otherwise not".

[maxxer]

Additional feedback: new folders should be automatically synced only if parent is (fully?) selected. Given this situation on the client:

* [ ] Folder1
* [x] Folder2 
 \ *  [x] Folder3
* [ ] Folder5
 \ *  [x] Folder6

IMHO:

1. if I create a new folder in Folder2 it's synced automatically;
2. if I create a new folder in the root (or below Folder5) it's not synced automatically.

[redRolf]

I too would expect the behaviour described by @maxxer In general, I would really like to see this feature. We have several use cases for this at our company. This feature request has been opened for 3 years, what would be needed to move this closer to being implemented?

[claell]

I'll reopen this, as duplicates of this issue (like #30) were still unsolved when closing them as duplicates.

[claell]

In #110 it has been requested to have separate settings for files and folders.

[tomdereub]

Thanks for centralising this subject. I just want to put here again my proposition, as I find it's a good way to solve this, with a solution that's at the same time working well without intentional action of users, and still allowing users to do precisely what they want if needed.

I think a way to be flexible with that could be to add a tick box on every folder called something like "synchronize new folders".

That way, when you select a folder you want to synchronize, it will be fully synchronized, all subfolders tick boxes will be selected, including "synchronize new folders". When you synchronize a folder partially, there are two ways of doing it :

• you just untick some folders, it means that you want to synchronize all folders but some of them, and by default you'll synchronize new folders, except if you deliberately uncheck it.
• you untick the parent folder and select just the few folders you want to synchronize, that way you won't synchronize new folders by default, except if you deliberately check it.

This "Synchronize new folders" should be always on top and maybe have a different style as normal folders.

Maybe the name is not optimal, and I think a question remains : what about files in each folder ? Sometimes you don't want to sync files in a folder where you want to sync subfolders (in the image above, there could be big files in the folder "Example" I don't want to sync.

[claell]

I just had a short look through the issues and found many duplicates. It also looks as if this has not really been solved, yet.

Since this is important I'll add the appropriate label and also CC @karlitschek to possibly raise some awareness :)

[github-actions[bot]]

This bug report did not receive an update in the last 4 weeks. Please take a look again and update the issue with new details, otherwise the issue will be automatically closed in 2 weeks. Thank you!

[tomdereub]

No ! I really need this issue to be solved, it's causing many troubles in my company (25 people), by often silently syncing unwanted folders. Any feedback about my proposal ? Would it be complicated to develop ? I'm no dev, but I would be pleased to help in another way if possible.

[Joshuasony]

Same issue here and I agree with this thread and the request of being able on client side to decide if newly added folders are being synced automatically or not. Our Company with 150 people uses Nextcloud and users have no option the deactivate the automatic sync of new folders.

And on macos I have even another, very annoying issue: deselecting those automatically checked folders is not removing them from my harddrive. I have only found one other person that experienced this issue, but it was resolved for him when moving to a new server. https://github.com/nextcloud/desktop/issues/2468

[github-actions[bot]]

This bug report did not receive an update in the last 4 weeks. Please take a look again and update the issue with new details, otherwise the issue will be automatically closed in 2 weeks. Thank you!

[tomdereub]

Once more, don't stale this issue please ! I'm still hopping for a solution one day...

[Ossur]

This is also a privacy issue. Many users sync selected folders to their work computers - which often are hooked up to all sorts of surveillance and running on proprietary operating systems. Any new folders popping up there is not good enough

[github-actions[bot]]

This bug report did not receive an update in the last 4 weeks. Please take a look again and update the issue with new details, otherwise the issue will be automatically closed in 2 weeks. Thank you!

[tomdereub]

Up !

[tomdereub]

Any news about this issue ? What do you think about the solution proposed here https://github.com/nextcloud/desktop/issues/10#issuecomment-950760178 ?

[albert-a]

@tomdereub, you are thinking in the right direction. The decision to sync subfolders should be made per each folder explicitly, rather than by trying to guess what user meant by unchecking some of the subfolders.

Although, I think cluttering folders selection dialog can be confusing for users. The majority of users probably don't need it. I think that's why "Edit Ignored Files" (aka .sync-exclude.lst) is implemented separately. Not everybody needs it.

IMHO, this flag should be called "Manual Sync", and should be set on specific folder by creating empty file .sync-manual in the folder. Optionally it could be implemented as a checkbox in the context menu when right-clicking on the folder in the desktop client:

If the flag set for the folder, then

• its subfolders should be automatically deselected for each new desktop client installation/connection.
• if the flag appears on the existing installation, it does not trigger deselecting subfolders, but simply prevents new subfolders from being automatically selected.

PS: Though not all users need this feature, it can be extremely useful for the others. My use case is that we have a large Libraries folder, each subfolder of which is a library. Each user needs a small subset of the libraries, and selects what is needed. But when the new libraries become available, they are automatically synced to all users, which is of cause not desired. I would really benefit from this feature.

[albert-a]

Alternatively: This feature could be implemented with .sync-manual.lst file which could be empty, or contain the list of subfolders that are selected by default on the new desktop client installation/connection.

[tomdereub]

@albert-a : We are now starting to use VFS sync (even if we still have performance issues at the moment, especially first sync that's very long). With VFS we don't meet this issue any more.