I am setting up NextCloud Desktop Client 33.0.7 on a MacOS 26.5.2 laptop, with a managed NextCloud service.
I store some folders of very different size, so I would like some to synch and others not to. Typically, I want a couple of smaller folders (less than 1 Gb) to synch while folders storing photos (more than 100 Gb) should not. The Finder interface allows me to select folders to synch or not to synch (“Do not synch” option). However, although I set these, the client seems to simply ignore them and to try to download hundreds of Gigabytes of data.
How to avoid this, and enforce my choice of what to synch and what not to ?
i think the confusing part is that macOS has two different sync modes.
if this is the newer File Provider mode, Finder can show the whole 100 GB tree without actually downloading it. the cloud/down-arrow icon means it’s only a placeholder. i’d check whether the account root was accidentally set to “Always keep downloaded”; for Photos, “Allow automatic freeing up space” should keep it online-only.
if it’s a classic sync folder, the selection is inside Nextcloud Desktop under account settings → three-dot menu → “Choose What to Sync.”
if disk usage really is climbing after that, then yeah, it sounds like the client is ignoring the setting rather than you configuring it wrong.
I got a customer report just recently about this. Apparently, Apple changed Finders user interface recently. It now offers this first-party context menu item which is meant to exclude arbitrary items manually from synchronization. It is shown based on a capability reported to the system. We have reported that capability this far but will no longer with the upcoming 34.0.0 version which will result in that context menu item no longer being offered. This is a bug and not intended. Technically, we cannot support Finder’s first party action in this regard right now. The system reports that action as a deletion event without any possibility to distinguish it from an actual deletion.
Many thanks @hweiwhang and @iva.horn for your replies.
To clarify, I first used the Finder’s menu and that was indeed ineffective, as the menu under Menu Bar NextCloud client was showing a download in progress of more than 200 Gb (besides the disk space issue, this would also basically kill my home network for the next 12 or 24 hours).
Then, I also went in the Settings of the client to manually select what to synch. It seemed unable to stop the ongoing download.
At this point, I went in the NextCloud client menu, removed my account, removed the files from the drive and added the account again; by selecting what to synch in the Nextcloud window at the directory synch creation time, I could avoid the enormous download.
So it seems there is at least one bug somewhere in the NextCloud desktop client. I would expect that modifying the selection of what to synch within the client should interrupt the in-progress download, and it did not. There is possibly another but in the interaction with the Finder indeed.
I would be fine with either option working (selecting the directories to download in the Finder or within the client), but my current work-around (selection at the Folder synch creation time) does not sound very satisfactory. I understand that the distinguishing a Finder action towards synching or not from a deletion action might be difficult. I will try again to activate/de-activate directories within the client. If it is possible to get this to work, that would be awesome.