without this auto-sync feature, nextcloud is basically useless.
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I would like true two way sync but I wouldn’t call it useless. I’ll wait for the feature to hit. I love the NC eco system.
If someone desires that functionality now, seafile does it. Not that I think you should switch.
Devs, throw my vote in the list for it. I would my pictures folder to sync with all my devices.
I used to use syncthing until now, but I turn to Nextcloud because it allows me to access my files without necessarily having to synchronize them.
At the mobile level, Android in my case, I miss the synchronization of a folder. Just in terms of sorting photos, this is a huge problem. Indeed, changes made on my personal PC are not automatically transferred to my phone. It’s very annoying because I have to sort twice, or else I have to do it with the source device.
I also vote for a real synchronization!
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I tried to get Syncthing to actually sync the things on my Android SD card, but that never worked. I was hoping to make use of that feature here, but maybe I was planning on using something else on mobile and NextCloud for the repository.
Hey guys, how are you dealing with this missing feature?
Anything else besides alternative apps?
Considering this thread was started in 2017 and one year passed without any progress on this matter, I have serious doubts that any improvements will take place soon.
I agree. The purpose of the app is to keep some folders in sync and that is not happening! 
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The purpose of any tool is determined by it’s designer. If a tool is unfit for the purpose you as a user who did not design the tool yourself like to use it, then either help to adjust it to be fit for what you want, or pay others to. Or simply go elsewhere.
Nextcloud is a very useful tool for many people, as can easily seen by statistics showing their spread.
p.s. I do agree that the discussed feature would be useful and would love to see it be implemented, but demanding any feature of a open source tool your not involved in developing yourself is simply ridiculous.
Well, let me cite:
> With the Nextcloud clients for Android and iOS you can sync, edit and share your files in a fully secure way through an encrypted connection.
Thanks for your contribution!
p.s. it’s about the app, since you mention Nextcloud. Two different things! 
Hah! Well I agree it’s badly worded, since the auto-upload feature in the Android app clearly is not what you’d expect from reading about the ability to “sync edit and share your files”.
But still, I rather like the app for the ability to access my nextcloud folders and also for auto uploading pictures and other data generated on my phone, so very much not useless.
OK, it’s not totally useless. 
But it needs just a bit more love.
Besides the “sync” issue, the fact that you have to set up each subdirectory to be synced is also very annoying. 
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Hi all
I needed that feature too
android 7.1.2 Fairphone OpenOS
nc 15.0.0.10
BR Erich
I wonder, will this still be implemented in the next 10 years? Because until today this doesn’t work yet! At least not that I found it somewhere!
Android is an important client and you should pay more attention to it!
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I decided to use Nextcloud as I wanted to use a shopping list app, to replace Wunderlist and an app in f-droid (Shopping List) mentioned it could sync via Nextcloud.
Without auto-sync feature this wouldn’t work for me, so I headed over to an app which syncs automatically to OneDrive.
Just wanted to inform that Nextcloud could be losing some customers here.
However, I should note, neither OneDrive nor Dropbox has auto-sync feature for Android client yet, so I can understand why it would be low priority for Nextcloud, as well.
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Just trying out Nextcloud. This has been the first glaring omission I’ve run across. Sad to see this.
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I also would prefer to keep folders of my choice in sync insted of “only” uploading new files from the phone.
Nearby I had problems to solve fileconflicts in autoupload folders, when I modified a file on the phone. I solved the conflict (use file from phone), but the conflict popped up again and again. (Dev and Production version)
I also tried to make the sources compile with Android Studio, but I get a failure, because I’m new to Android studio and Java) (come from c++, c# and MS-VisualStudio World)
Hope I’ll get compiling to work somehow.
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I found a workaround that works for me: configure my camera folder to auto upload, but move the original file to the app folder. That way, the original photos will be moved and all changes from your computer will be accessible on your phone, just from a different folder.
Added benefit for me is that I can tell which photos have been uploaded and which haven’t (I’m not always online).
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Anybody has experience with FolderSync app on Android ?
So near…
I use an encrypted file system and store the encrypted files in a subfolder of my nextcloud folder on a Linux machine. The Nextcloud desktop client syncs these to my server and from there to other desktop clients (Windows and other Linux PCs). If I need to I can then decrypt and access the valuable contents on those other machines.
With the Android Nextcloud client I can manually sync the crypt folder to get a local copy. I can also mark existing files as ‘favourites’ and I’ve found that changes to the underlying clear text files will then remain in sync in the background. However, if the encrypted file system on a PC creates a new file it is not marked as a ‘favourite’ on the Android client and so will not be synced by the background processing.
It seems to me that for my use case being able to mark a folder as a ‘favourite’ such that any new files created in it are automatically marked as ‘favourite’ would solve my problem.
One obvious other way around it for me is to use a container file based encrypting file system and mark the container file as ‘favourite’ - but that introduces other problems.
For the moment I’m back to using syncthing (which is an excellent utility) in a separate folder branch - but I’d rather consolidate to the brilliant and more generally useful Nextcloud and not have so many apps running on my phone or PCs.
Since years FolderSync is doing what I expect from a sync tool, keeping my phone synched with the server.
But it synchs only on defined intervals, it does not synch instantly after changes in the files. Which propaply saves battery.
The ads are not very annoying, cus you configure it once and then it should be running in the background.
I would love to see this exact functionality included in the nx app. Or at least see it in any other foss app on f-Droid.
One big reason I still rely on Play Store. Any suggestions here?
Another voice chiming in that actual sync functionality would be greatly appreciated in the Android app. What bugs me is that “file syncing” is mentioned as a feature, but as many others have said, auto-upload is not the functionality that people expect.
Even the documentation here blatantly skips over how to actually sync anything. It literally just says to install and start the app.
It’s been four years since folder syncing was mentioned as a “feature we plan to add in the future”, so at this point it seems unlikely to happen.
Nextcloud is great despite the glitches, but the lack of folder syncing for Android is the only thing that’s making me consider other platforms.
Would love to hear an update on the status of this feature.
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The closest feature request / bug report that fits this is Synchronize should also upload locally created files · Issue #8078 · nextcloud/android · GitHub
If you think this is important, then I suggest you vote on this.
Is there an issue on github that is specific to implementing the same feature as it exists on desktop? That means:
- select a local folder to sync
- select the remote folder that it should be synced with
- automatically sync all modifications of existing files and folder + new files and folders
Edit
There are many issues on this, but probably these 3 are the ones should be voting on: