Today we are proud to announce the first view on a project we’ve been working on for quite some time: a Virtual Drive in the Nextcloud Desktop client! A Virtual Drive makes files always visible on your system, irrespective of whether they are available locally or not, making the use of your cloud storage far more seamless.
The virtual drive, a standard technology in desktop synchronization clients, replaces the traditional files in a locally synchronized folder with a virtual view on all files the user has, available on demand and with a smart caching strategy.
We quoted our CEO, Frank Karlitschek, in the press release, about the importance of the desktop client:
The Desktop Client is a centerpiece of our synchronization strategy. Thus it is important we keep pushing the boundaries and deliver on what customers ask for.
Benefits of a virtual drive
Rather than eating up all the space on the drive or forcing the user to manually handle syncing on a per-folder base, a virtual drive makes sure files are available when needed. The drive shows files as if they were available on the local system but when clicked, they are downloaded and kept available for a set time in a local cache. For users, this process is far simpler, allowing them to open files no matter what way they access them. “File open” dialogs, “Recent files” dialogs and of course the file manager like Finder or Explorer all properly handle the files. This as opposed to a solution like replacement files, which is limited to the file manager and comes with other limitations like not showing the right icons.
Virtual drive in action
Installation automatically installs Dokan
Nextcloud only needs Dokan coreCurrent state
The project has been in development for some time and we consider it ready for the wider community to get involved and provide feedback, testing and code contributions. The tech preview, while functional, is not recommended for daily usage. The tech preview released today works on Microsoft Windows. The Mac version is functional and a build will be available in the coming weeks. The Linux version will be addressed next.
The Windows version will need Dokan, an open source user mode virtual filesystem installed. Our installer will take care of that (and tell you), if you have already Dokan but it is an incompatible version you’ll be warned.
You can download the Tech Preview here.
Initially, a version with the Virtual Drive will be available next to the current Nextcloud client, we have not yet decided if we should let the two approaches (one or more synchronized directories and the Virtual Drive) live together. While it is possible to have both at the same time, we believe the Virtual Drive is fundamentally the superior approach so we will likely move to it completely. Input on this is welcome!
Of course, help is welcome too, and you can see our work on github in the virtual-drive-techpreview branch and get involved!
More is happening in the client!
In other client news, last week our desktop team got together for an E2E development sprint and we hope to see the results of this in a stable client update soon! There is an ambitious roadmap of polishing the client and bringing many features you see in our other clients also to the desktop over the coming months, so users can enjoy a more consistent experience across platforms. This work will run in parallel with testing and improving the Virtual Drive.
Announcements today
Today we also announced that Nextcloud GmbH more than doubled its customer base during 2018 and more good news as well as the establishment of a Customer Advisory Board to help align development with the needs of our most valued customers.
You can learn more about these in their respective announcements:
Would be nice to have an option under Installation to chose. Was setting my new laptop today. Really looking forward to not carry all crap with me all the time and have it on demand. Another good move NextCloud keep the good work and big thanks.
Hi,
sorry for the late reply, my account was broken due to a bug in discourse for a long time and now I have about 1 million messages to get to
So first, we haven’t decided anything - development is nearly stalled as we’re busy with customer support issues and I don’t expect much progress until we’ve hired somebody, which itself is stalled for other reasons. It’ll take some time.
In any case, please keep in mind that the ‘virtual drive’ DOES sync files locally - and DOES work offline, of course. On a system like Linux you could probably symlink folders in place of the current ones to the virtual drive and things would work exactly like today, except that you can decide, for each file, if it is synced, not only per folder, and you would be able to ALWAYS see all the files, even those that aren’t synced and they get synced automatically whenever you open them.
We absolutely don’t want to break any existing workflows - we will try to find a solution so things keep working the way they do to day as much as possible. I think the only thing that would stop working is that you can’t access the files when the client isn’t running. You don’t have to be online, but no client = no files. This, I think, not a step back, but an improvement because it happens to many people that they change some files, shut down their computer, leave - and the files weren’t synced because the client was not running. That won’t happen anymore!
Anyway. Once we have a more stable virtual drive, we’ll maintain both clients until we have found a good migration solution.
For me, as i use the ownCloud Virtual Drive sync, and reed carefully the blog about the Nextcloud Virtual Drive sync, i know that you can still left click on files/folders and make them available offline.
In fact Virtual Drive is really a neat feature.
But we (community and Nextcloud team) should open a dialog to state about the futur of the nextcloud client sync method (only one ? Both ?..).
Because there is some drawbacks, some movement to teach to customers, and workflows to modify.
The dialog must start as soon as possible because there is some Dev work to do on the nextcloud client, there is some annoying bugs on the actual version that need to be fix… it’s better to know what would be great for the most users before working on something that can agrevate…
Hope you will find some good persons to hire, it’s very important.
Please keep in mind, and spread the news : Nextcloud isn’t a backup solution, even in the basic function.
If you look at the start page nextcloud.com you won’t see anywhere the word backup used.
If you get a bug on your nextcloud server, it could overwrite your files on your computer… and what do you do with that if you think nextcloud is my backup…
Your nextcloud server need to be backed up ! If you don’t have, so nextcloud cannot be used as a backup solution.
End of the tip.
+1 specially for the MacOS users
I would prefer to have a folder and choose if I want it online or offline.