Desktop client on-demand file sync (like GDrive)

📱 Desktop & mobile clients 💻 Desktop
#1

Hi,

are the nextcloud desktop clients somehow able to sync files and folders only when I access them?
The GDrive integration shows exactly this behavior which is great if you have huge shared folders like team folders or image/video collections, …

The behavior I’m looking for is somewhat like this:

  • The NC client syncs the whole folder structure including files
  • The files are not synced completely but only all the necessary metadata such like name, size, … and previews are synced.
  • Files are created as something like proxies
  • When I try to access a file for the first time the client syncs the file then lazily

Does something like this exist or can I achieve such a behavior with another sync client?

Thanks so far!

#2

The feature is called virtual file system. It was announces a long time ago, was alpha status for quite some time:

I didn’t want to try when it was in an alpha state. I still have the traditional sync and only sync specific folders, not all. So I can’t say how reliable it is.