Hello! I’ve been following the availability of VFS in the macOS Desktop for some time, and I’ve had it enabled as an experimental option. I now tried the new VFS desktop client, but it confused me on the VFS options, their pros and cons, and what the recommended way is today to work with VFS on macOS.
My questions, based on my observations below, are:
- Is it recommended to use the new File Provider over the prior experimental VFS support?
- In that case of using the File Provider, should I disable the experimental support to prevent having duplicate files on my system? With other words: is it expected that the File Provider location is the only way to access NC in Finder?
- Will NC eventually deprecate the experimental VFS support in favor of the File Provider support?
Update: I found answers and more discussion in this thread Virtual files for macOS · nextcloud/desktop · Discussion #6656 · GitHub
Any insights would be appreciated! I’m using a MBP 14 inch, 2021, with macOS Sonoma (14.6.1).
My observations on the current options
Please correct me if my understanding is wrong.
Option A: through the experimental flag
Once I learned that I could enable VFS through enabling experimental options in nextcloud.cfg (as documented) several months ago, I did.
To compare with what I’ll describe below, the behavior when I enabled this was:
- my designated local Nextcloud folder shows checkmarks in Finder to reflect the NC sync state of files and folders, just like before VFS support.
- I can right-click on files and folders in Finder, and see Nextcloud context menu options to control the VFS settings of that folder.
I generally liked this workflow!
Option B: the VFS Desktop Client
Today, I noticed in the downloads page that there was a new, alternative client called “macOS Virtual files 12+ (64 bit, universal)”. I assumed this meant that the VFS feature was not experimental anymore, and for some reason was separated into its own client. I wanted to install this new stable version.
However, as far as I understand now, this is a different client application.
When I installed it, I noticed a few things:
- A new macOS cloud storage location was added to Finder, called “Nextcloud”. I assume this is a File Provider location, similar to iCloud’s Drive and NC’s integration with Files on iOS/iPadOS.
- My local Nextcloud folder was still in the state that I left it, but it lost its green checkmarks and NC context menu options. I could, I think, still control it through the NC settings panel.
- The VFS availability configuration of files & folders folders between these two views on my NC did not seem to sync. For example, if I had a file downloaded in my local folder like
~/Nextcloud/<folder>/<file.ext>, it was not shown as available offline in the File Provider location. When I downloaded it there, it got a path like/Users/thor/Library/CloudStorage/Nextcloud-thor@<host>/<folder>/<file.ext>.
All in all, with the new client, I seemed to have enabled two conflicting VFS implementations at the same time: NC’s own implementation in Finder, and an File Provider integration. I’ve now reverted to the original client.
I’m in the same chaos… ( Retina 5K, 27-inch, Late 2014 - 15.0 (24A335) - Nextcloud-3.14.2-macOS-vfs ) trying to sort things out, I removed everything (afraid of losing files in the cloud) and reinstalled only the “macOS Virtual files 12+ (64 bit, universal)” version, hoping I could finally use the Virtual Files feature in Google Drive mode (which is super handy).