Hello,
I am using Nextcloud Desktop 34.0.3 on Windows, with virtual file support enabled.
Many folders display blue circular arrows and “Sync pending” in Windows File Explorer, although the Nextcloud client reports that synchronization completed successfully. Files and subfolders inside the affected folders show normal availability statuses, and other folders in the same sync connection correctly display a green checkmark. Checks on the test folder have not identified missing files.
Anonymized example
C:\Users\<User>\Nextcloud\Personal\Folder-A\Folder-B
The test folder contains approximately 235 files totaling 340 MiB. Its contents appear synchronized, but the folder itself remains marked as pending.
Troubleshooting already attempted
- Quitting and restarting Nextcloud.
- Restarting Windows and waiting for synchronization to complete.
- Refreshing File Explorer with F5.
- Checking “Always keep on this device” on the test folder; it was already enabled.
- Selecting “Force sync now”. There was no visible activity and the client continued to report successful synchronization, while the folder status remained unchanged.
Diagnostic findings
A read-only check of the local sync database, performed with the client stopped, reported no corruption. The pending upload/download and conflict tables were empty at that time. During a discovery pass in the debug log, the test folder and its examined descendants were reported with CSYNC_INSTRUCTION_NONE. This suggests that no synchronization action was scheduled for those entries; it is not a full content-hash verification.
Workaround found: renaming folders
Renaming an affected folder causes the client to process it again, and its status icon in File Explorer becomes normal. Interestingly, the icon changes while processing is still underway, not only when it finishes. I do not know whether this is a full rescan or simply a metadata/status refresh.
In my attempts so far, I have had to work from the deepest affected folders upwards. This becomes very time-consuming, as processing larger parent folders takes increasingly longer. I have not established whether renaming only a parent would reliably fix all affected descendants.
During this processing, synchronization also appeared to stall for a while, but subsequently resumed on its own. I cannot confirm whether that pause is related to the incorrect folder statuses.
I found an older issue describing similar behavior: nextcloud/desktop #3082. I am unsure whether this is the same issue in the current version.
Questions
- Is this a known Windows VFS issue involving stale folder statuses, or a child status propagated to its parent?
- Is there a supported way to refresh the Windows sync status of a folder/subtree without renaming every affected folder, deleting the sync database, recreating the connection, or downloading everything again?
- What additional diagnostic information would help?
All paths above are anonymized. Thank you for your help.