Best practice for file syncing?

Kinda ignorant question, I guess, but is there a best practice for syncing files with Nextcloud? Right now, I’m the only user on my instance and I synce between 3 or 4 machines, usually just my desktop and laptop. It seems I’m constantly getting files mixed up, version conflicts, over-writes, etc. I don’t think it’s anything NC is doing in particular, I just don’t seem to have the hang of it. Like at the end of the day, if I don’t make sure my NC client is open and everything is synced up before quitting for the evening, when I open my laptop at night, something’s going to get jacked up. Or when I edit something in my Zim-wiki, it doesn’t get synced up right away and when i go out in my shop, I don’t see the most recent changes or I make a change to something out in the shop and it conflicts with the changes I just made on my desktop… I just can’t seem to get a good rhythm going where everything syncs up properly and I’m constantly having to compare files and straighten everything out. Again, i don’t think it’s a problem with NC, I just don’t seem to be doing something right. Is there a “write up” somewhere or any info as to how to keep file syncing running smoothly? When everything is going ok, it’s very nice, but it’s kind of like running down-hill, one mis-step and I’m going head over heels wiping out everything in my path. :open_mouth: Thanks.

running the client all the time is the only way to ensure all changes arrive on the server which is the central hub distributing the changes further to other clients. By default the client runs all the time and the server receives all the updates soon… this way all client which have been offline at this time receive updates when they come online… there is no special procedure to follow.

Ok, thanks for the reply. I’ll need to research the config options and see if there’s anything I’ve got that I could change to speed things up. One thing that’s not syncing are my collective folders, but maybe that’s a separate issue. I have to go into my client and choose to sync them because they’re showing as “external storage”. I created and edited all of that info from within the browser on my NC instance so I don’t know why they would be considered external storage. I added that module to use in the future, but I have not set up any drives or directories as external storage yet. I haven’t really dug into a lot of the settings other than maintenance if I had a problem with an update or some error message in the log file, I’m pretty much running with a default install, so maybe there’s some tweaking I can do. :slight_smile:

What types of files are you predominantly working with?

Mostly LO file & PDFs. I’m also trying to figure out how to smoothly edit my collective files with Joplin and it automatically sync into the right place. I’m not a fan of editing through a web interface as my servers are on a private network not accessible through the internet so I prefer using local clients/apps on my laptop or phone and then everything sync up later. Sometimes things don’t sync up and I’ll have to quit the NC client then fire it back up and that usually does it but sometimes it doesn’t right away. I don’t think it’s a nextcloud problem per se but something’s not right sometimes. I do know I’m liking NC more the more i use it and work it into my daily routine. :slight_smile: