Mac Nextcloud client, File Provider and external volumes

apastuszak · August 3, 2026, 3:50am

MacOS supports File Provider on external drives, as long as the drive is formatted APFS and encrypted. Dropbox already supports this. Any chance we could get the Nextcloud client for Mac to support this?

iva.horn · August 4, 2026, 2:38pm

Hi! You are asking in the wrong place. This is the community forum which will probably not have answers to such feature requests. You can open an issue in our GitHub issue tracker about this where the discussion can also be kept in one piece. Thanks!

iva.horn · August 31, 2026, 1:42pm

For reference, the GitHub issue:

github.com/nextcloud/desktop

Feature request: support external/removable volumes for Virtual Files (File Provider) on macOS

opened 08:47AM - 31 Aug 26 UTC

atwm

1. to develop os:

macOS feature:

file provider

## Feature request: support external/removable volumes for Virtual Files (File P…rovider) on macOS Virtual Files sync always stores data under `~/Library/CloudStorage/Nextcloud-<account>` on the boot volume — no way to relocate it. This is a real gap for large libraries on small/full internal disks, especially since v34 removed the ability to run Classic Sync alongside Virtual Files on macOS. **Proposed**: let users choose a volume (APFS + encrypted, per Apple's constraints) for the Virtual Files domain. **Technical pointer**: macOS 15+ added `NSFileProviderDomain.init(displayName:userInfo:volumeURL:)` and `NSFileProviderManager.checkDomainsCanBeStoredOnVolume(at:)` for exactly this. Would it be possible to take this into consideration for future enhancements? My internal disk is starving for space, and my NextCloud installation has some 3 Tb of files (mainly photographs), swapping them in an out is not really feasible. (In the meantime, I am using classic synching), but if FileProvider is the future, this becomes a real limitation for me. Nextcloud desktop client: 34.0.3 (macOS)