Nextcloud Android app update with improved user interface and sharing

Originally published at: https://nextcloud.com/blog/nextcloud-android-app-update-with-improved-user-interface-and-sharing/

Today the Nextcloud Android team is proud to release version 3.2, which brings a new file detail view together with a large number of smaller user interface improvements and bug fixes. With almost 80 merged pull requests and over 35 resolved issue reports, this release is all about polishing and improving the user experience.

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The new detail view for files has been updated to be more consistent with our web interface view. The design went through 4 different iterations with input from half a dozen contributors and many more testers, and attention was spend to details like using the same order in the file menu as is used in the web interface. A special thanks goes to long time contributor Andy Scherzinger who was the driving force behind the work on the new view!

Besides the big piece of user interface work, bug fixes related to end-to-end encryption, contacts backup, the upload view and the image viewer were included.

As always, you can get the Android client for free in the Google App Store or, with a short delay in F-Droid, and we look forward to your feedback!

Will there be something of a meaningful documentation of what the app actually does? The current documentation is stuck in version 1.0 and doesn’t explain what “automatic syncing” of files means in the context of the app (hint: it doesn’t mean syncing, it rather means something like up- or download; and automatic means that it does it everytime you push the righ button). It is highly confusing when desktop and mobile clients use similar terminology for functionality that is actually quite different. Would be very helpful if we can at least check what the app is supposed to do. And pls don’t refer to the release notes; while they do give a hint about changes between versions, they don’t document functionality in any way. Thanks.

would you be so kind and file an issue for it on github?

automatic upload once again broken by update.

  • To fix it, one again, had to cut/past all pics in DCIM to another location.
  • Stop the app, clear the cache.
  • cut/past back the files.
  • Restart the app.

In my case, the auto upload locations were disabled after the update.
Enabling them again was enough to get them working again.

Thank you guys for the work on the app.

I think there is an issue with the share ui. There is no way to get an existing share link via the app.
Image you have a shared folder or something and you want to forward the link to another person. Then you open the share properties. There you´re only able to edit share settings link “edit-permission”.
The only way to get a share-link is to create a new one. But this means the old link is valid anymore.

regards,
christian

Hello Chris,
I’m a real noob of only 2 days so FWIW here is a copy of link sharing on the files page:

Regards, Steve

@Andy and @mario the new sharing options have become more difficult to use.

  1. Tap to share a link via the checkbox
  2. Prompts to share the link before I’ve had time to tweak the settings
  3. No longer seemingly possible to get the link again without unsharing/sharing

Furthermore, getting the share to hide file listings was not successful, after spending far too long looking for the option, I enabled it and returned to the web interface only to note it had edit permissions.

Not a pleasant sharing experience at all.

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Hi @JasonBayton :slight_smile: Any suggested app change should be proposed in the issue tracker only, like https://github.com/nextcloud/android/issues/2705 (improving new sharing screen, links)

I was looking for some community engagement to see if it’s only me this affects tbh :slight_smile:

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It is imho a general UX issue and it is hard to “guess” how to get the link after creation and should definitely be fixed :slight_smile:

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@JasonBayton fixed for 3.3.0 and already opened a backport for 3.2.1: Display copy icon and adding send action to the link menu by AndyScherzinger · Pull Request #2730 · nextcloud/android · GitHub

@jan rooted for keeping/having it this way. You can (now) still edit the link’s permissions/parameters afterwards and now either send (to any app) or copy the link to the clipboard :slight_smile:

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It’s not good UX. Every share I create I have to cancel out of the link to edit the expiry or change permissions. Really annoying.

Thanks for the fix though :slight_smile:

Note that help is always welcome of course. Writing such a document doesn’t take too much technical skills, just a bit of time.

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@jasonbayton @Andy good point – opening a whole dialog automatically is a bit weird. My original intention was to only automatically copy the share link to the clipboard and show a toast with that feedback (“Share link copied”). That way you don’t have an invasive popup and can directly paste. But if you do want direct sharing options, you can tap the copy icon next to it to get the popup.

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Nice solution @jan

I created an issue to implement this, see https://github.com/nextcloud/android/issues/2742

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that does indeed sound better!

He’s clever like that :stuck_out_tongue: