Self hosted cloud with mac app that can sync and filestream (similar to google drive)

Deemo@bookwormstory.social to Selfhosted@lemmy.world – 30 points –

Hi guys do you guys know any selfhosted cloud solution that has a combined sync and filestream option?

Context when you use seafile on macos there is seadrive (mounts external cloud like a drive) and seafile sync which syncs files to local folders. The problem is the two clients sort of act seperatly from one other (you cant make seadrive make files offline for instance neither can you preview files in seafile sync).

By contrast onedrive and google drive both have client apps which can sync on demand (file stream) and optionally make files available offline with a simple right click in context menu.

Side note I have tried nextcloud on mac but its experimental mount mode just keeps a placeholder .nextcloud file.

Edit:

Nextcloud does have proper virtual file sync. Only limitation is you can't make files availble offline via the context menu and instead need to set up manual folder syncs

Edit 2:

You need to grab the release from https://github.com/nextcloud-releases/desktop/releases/tag/v3.13.0

Specifically the vfs version Nextcloud-3.13.0-macOS-vfs.pkg

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Have a look at Syncthing

Syncthing copies the whole directory content, not just what you need.

OP is asking probably because of the outrageous apple SSD prices. For reference, swapping the 256gb SSD on the $700 Mac mini with a 2tb one costs $1000. And it's soldered on the motherboard so you have to decide when you buy it.

Because drive and RAM size on apple computers is simply unaffordable (even in 2014 buying 1,75tb of solid storage would have costed less than this!), many users need to be conscious on what to locally save on the drive.

It's probably to push users to iCloud as it's optimized to keep everything online and occupy as less space as possible

Syncthing doesn’t have an ‘files on demand’ feature though. The way that cloud storage providers do it is by having placeholder files which are selectively synced. Resilio Sync can do it, although it does change the file extension for the placeholder files to .rslsync temporarily.

Unfortunatly like syncthing nextcloud mac app also has the same file extension sync issue (they use .nextcloud).

Is that still the case for the Nextcloud macOS client? Because this post from the devs from a few months ago implies that the .nextcloud file extension behaviour is temporary and that they’re meant to be using Apple’s File Provider API, same way that Dropbox and OneDrive do.

https://github.com/nextcloud/desktop/discussions/6267

This is how it shows up for me on Nextcloud desktop client 3.13.0

Looks like that feature is still in beta and therefore only available in the beta client. The stable release still uses the .nextcloud extension workaround.

Update the stable client does have proper virtual file sync.

Regarding the previous virtual file sync system (.nextcloud) you had to enable experimental features to get it. The latest stable just has both versions of syncing and I missed the obsious vfs sync option.

The only downside to the new system is there isn't a make file/folder available offline always option in the context menu (you can get around this by manually setting up synced folders but it is a little inconvient).

Ah! Good to know! I haven’t touched my Mac client sync settings in a while so I’ll check this out.

Update regarding virtual files has more quirks.

  • You cannot move files or folders. If you try nextcloud will simply copy the files to new destinaiton while not moving.
  • the nextcloud sync and virtual files refresh/update independently (a change may propigate to sync but not files and vice versa).

Also turns out the reason it was a github release was it is still in alpha 😅 .

Ah no wonder it’s experimental.

It’ll get there eventually.