Editing ODT docs on my phone, using the Nextcloud android app is a generally unpleasant experience, especially if I’m somewhere without a stable internet connection, for example on a train, or dodgy hotel wifi.
When I’m at home on my desktop, I often use the “open locally” option in which case I can edit documents in Libreoffice without any of the lag that occurs when editing within the nextcloud client.
Is there any way of doing something similar on my phone? When I’m out and about, it’s the copy of the document sitting on my phone that’s most important. I don’t actually need it to be constantly synced with the server. Syncing only when saving or closing the document would be fine, for example.
It’s been a while since I last used it, but basically it’s Collabora Online, i.e. the same interface as in the Nextcloud app, with the difference that it runs entirely local on your phone.
Yes, I actually already have this. The app runs on my phone, but it still sends changes back and forth to the server, instead of working on a local copy of the file. So it is not really any different to the nextcloud client - it suffers the same lag and doesn’t let me open/edit files offline.
It looks like the answer to this question is “no”.
This is a shame because it would make Nextcloud a lot more usable for taking notes and editing documents on the go. As it is, it’s a much more janky experience than, for example, Google drive. Presumably this is because of the amount of resource that google can throw at their infrastructure - so that connections with the servers are a lot more stable.
There’s an option to “Export” a file instead of “Download” or “Synchronize” it. If I do that with an .xlsx or .docx file, it gets saved to the local Downloads folder on my phone, and no green checkmark appears in the Nextcloud app. So as far as I can tell, that downloads the file and creates a purely local copy.
Of course, if you make changes to that local copy, those changes will not be automatically synchronized back to the server. You would then have to manually upload the file again and replace the existing version on the server in order to apply your local changes.
Ok, I’ve now installed Collabora Office on my phone for testing. I turned off Wi-Fi so the connection would be slower than on my LAN, and I have to say that a relatively large Excel file, which I synchronized/downloaded beforehand (green checkmark), loads noticeably faster with the local Collabora app than in the online editor directly inside the Nextcloud app.
So to me, it seems that the Collabora Office app does actually use the locally synchronized file and does not establish a direct WebDAV connection to the server or anything like that.
In my testing, I also didn’t notice any difference at all in loading or editing performance between “synchronized” and “exported” files. The exported files were opened directly from the phone’s local file manager, so 100% local, with no involvement from the Nextcloud app whatsoever, which further convinces me that in both cases the local file is being used.
So my current theory would be that if performance is still sluggish when working with downloaded/synchronized files, then maybe Collabora Office itself simply isn’t particularly performant with more complex files, even when opening them locally.
Another possibility is that background synchronisation via the Nextcloud app might be causing slowdowns when the connection is poor, since it will of course still try to sync changes in the local file, as long as there is any connection to the server.
So the next two things I would do are:
Try other office apps that might perform better in general.
Check whether performance improves when you are completely offline, i.e. when mobile data and Wi-Fi are fully disabled on the phone.
Addition:
If #2 does indeed improve performance, you might want to consider using a different Office app that does not autosave continuously. Continuous auto-saving means the app is constantly writing to the local file, which in turn causes the Nextcloud app to attempt to synchronise the file with the server repeatedly, which may lead to slowdowns when the connection is poor.
Thanks for your post above, especially this bit which has helped me clarify a few things. I had not previously understood that within the nextcloud client app, choosing “download” creates a local copy of the file which remains synced. In fact when I do this, then when I open it, I am automatically given the option to open it in collabora office.
I am going to test this a bit next time I’m somewhere with patchy data reception.
Previously I’d been opening the file within collabora office and the file browser structure it offers, which includes nextcloud as a cloud source. I’m not sure if that results in something different happening, compared to opening the downloaded file from the nextcloud client app.
By the way downloading the file in the nextcloud app doesn’t seem to result in it being visible anywhere within the android file browser.
I may also experiment a bit with the android open office app. The paid version appears to be able to work with a cloud source.
I see there’s also an android version of libre office.
Ok, so I think I now have a handle on how things work in the Android client.
If I choose “download” I get a local copy of the file on my phone, which is kept in sync with the main server copy. I can work on it if I’m offline. Even when online, opening this file opens it in my local app of choice. At the moment I’m trying AO office.
Next is to figure out what happens in the iPad nextcloud client. Frustratingly it’s not quite the same. For each file there is “Set as available offline”. Does this do the same thing as ”download” does in the Android client? I think it does. It produces a green down-arrow next to the file name. Does this mean the same as the green tick means in the android client? There seems to be no documentation for this.
Confusingly, other files in the list have a green tick against them. They seem also to be available offline (I can test this by putting the iPad in airline mode). What’s the difference in meaning between green down-arrow and green tick?
Unless I am offline there seems to be no way to open files locally from the iPad client (unlike the Android client). If I want to open locally on the iPad I have to open from within the app (eg AO office).
This inconsistency is rather frustrating. From a user point of view there’s always some anxiety that things are syncing in the way you expect them to…and this doesn’t help.