Neither am I able to code a āforkā (I only know how to make one from a piece of scrap metal), nor do I know how to hire a developer. But it looks like an investment into the āBasicā plan of ā¬36x100 = 3.6kā¬ would make me a customer and we could request that feature. Is that correct?
I would imagine, the people at Nextcloud know pretty well how to make a smoothly and reliably working 2-way-sync, since their Desktop Client does work wonderfully.
I did buy FolderSync, but it does not work well. For simple stuff (once per week syncing a mostly static folder of zip files to my phone) it works well.
But I did set up 2-way-sync for my Obsidian folder. This was horrible. Within the first week, I had four corrupted files, including data loss. And, additionally, in download-direction there is only the option to do a very slow full sync periodically. Unlike the NC-client, which does background magic, and within seconds every serverside new/changed file gets downloaded to local.
Right now, I am stuck with a Foldersync download-only version of my obsidian vault (no syncing back to server). I donāt want to use Obsidian Sync, as my stuff then ends up on their servers. But on all my Desktops/Laptops Nextcloud does a wonderful job.
I stopped using FolderSync a long time ago because I have no need for two way file sync on my phone. And yes maybe itās not suitable for your specific use case. But I also doubt that itās trivial to implement a 1:1 equivalent of the desktop client on mobile. if it were that easy, Iām sure someone would have done it alreadyā¦
And maybe, at least up to a certain point, you have to get away from the idea that Nextcloud can be a solution to every possible use case. There will always be edge-cases for which it is better to use a dedicated tool instead of a Swiss Army Knifeā¦ And in this particular case, at least for now, it seems like you donāt have much of choiceā¦
So maybe you should try something completely different to sync your Obsidian vault, which is independent from Nextcloud, like for example https://syncthing.net/. Iāve heard a lot of good things about it, but due to my own lack of experience, I canāt tell you how well it works with Obsidianā¦
ā¦or maybe donāt use proprietary apps like Obsidian, if you donāt want to use their proprietary services. With apps like that, thereās always a high possibility of having issues, when using 3rd party sync clients that are not explicitly supported. Especially on mobile devices.
I see your argument āif it were easy, someone would have done itāā¦ But, on the other hand, I never saw any explaination why it should be hard. Isnāt both just keeping track of a pile of documents on some storage?
On the Swiss Army Knife, I beg to differ: I am not trying to use Nextcloud for anything else than back in OwnCloud days: Syncing Files. Iām not doing Contacts, Talk, Notes, OnlineOffice stuff. So, it is not me making a Swiss Army Knife out of it.
And yes, Obsidian may not be FOSS, but it essentially just is a nice interface to a bunch of text files on your storage. That is the nice thing. You expressly donāt need their sync. If you can sync your files, you can sync your Obsidian Vault. But it is not Obsidian spcific: I ran into the same no-2-way-sync issue some years earlier, when trying to have an up-to-date shared documents folder synced locally my phone. Also didnāt work. (But at the time I didnāt know about FolderSync.)
It would be awesome, if Nextcloud provided a ācrowd bountyā option for features. Put up a bucket, label it with XYZ$ dollars, and when The Community has filled the bucket, the feature gets implemented. Because right now, The Community is not listened to. āYeah they might want it, but as the didnāt do it themselves, it surely canāt be that important.ā Yes, I agree, it is open source and NC has no obligations to anyone from The Community.
But this leaves two options for me as citizen of The Community: 1. Code it myself (canāt), or 2. hire a Dev (canāt). But option 3: investing a few bucks and convincing 1000 others to invest a few bucks, for the benefit of those who really know the software best, that would be feasable.
And you still wouldnāt have any guarantees that Obsidian would work smoothly with it, because mobile devices and mobile apps simply canāt be compared 1:1 with desktop operating systems and desktop apps. And also, because apps like Obsidian are not built to get synchronized with 3rd party sync toolsā¦
And even on a desktop OS, file synchronization can cause issues. There have been people here who had issues with OneNote or large Photoshop files, or some who wanted to synchronize their home folders or even their Thunderbird or Firefox profiles via Nextcloud. Ok granted, these last ones are probably not the best examples.
Anyways, I canāt say much more about it, except that I can understand that thereās a need for a full 2-way sync in the mobile app, even if it will probably not be the optimal solution for many of the use cases people would use it for. iām pretty sure, that there will be many cases, in which it will cause more problems than it will solve. Iām not saying your use case is necessarily one of those, but I wouldnāt bet on it either.
Yes, there is no guarantee that Obsidian works smoothly with any sync - but it does work very very well with NC Desktop. And yes, you are right, in some edge cases sync can go wrong even on desktops. But thatās NCās core expertise: Syncing stuff. And in my case, 99.95% just work wonderfully. There are things that donāt work, but as I have some level of understanding how NC works, I only expect stuff to work, which actually can work. And it does.
So, donāt get worked up about Obsidian. Obsidian is not the source of the problem here. It could be any folder with files. Even in the blog entry you linked: Syncthing eventually gets tossed, because it misses functionality. A functionality, which is already there in NC Desktops.
This same NC core functionality (just keeping a folder of files synced over the internet) is not present on the mobile app. Which is sad. And I am a member of The Community. And I am powerless, as detailed in the three options of my last post.
(And, tbh, this is a little what hurts: Hearing NC say āYeah, we see they want that feature, we see their agony. But meh, they didnāt do it themselves, so we wonāt either.ā And there isnāt even a path we could go. The crowd funding approach I described would actually be a way to bring communityās feature needs and NCās financial needs together. And if NC āself hostedā their bounty bucket, they could avoid their value-conflict with Bountysource.)
Yeah sure, I certainly donāt mind, if someone, or the Nextcloud devs themselves, would implement it. And crowdfunding might be a good way to get it goingā¦
With apps like that, thereās always a high possibility of having issues, when using 3rd party sync clients that are not explicitly supported. Especially on mobile devices.