The ownCloud Client Goes Virtual – Sync Your Files on Demand

The ownCloud virtual file system will greatly enhance the user experience of the Desktop Client. Save bandwidth and local storage by syncing the files directly at your fingertips. Try it out!

Today, we want to introduce an experimental feature for the Desktop Client. It will improve the ownCloud user experience a great deal, as soon as it is out full-fledged: the virtual file system.

 

What is the ownCloud Virtual File System?

Right now, you can sync specific folders to your computer – you can select them in the account view of the settings window. Most times, it is useful to sync only parts of your ownCloud – while we store terabytes of data in the cloud, we only have limited storage on our local devices.

In the future, we want to make the sync process even more intuitive. Instead of selecting a folder in the account view, you will see the whole folder structure of your ownCloud in your file manager window, like all your offline files. Every file on your ownCloud will have a small placeholder file on your file system, with an .owncloud file extension.

If you need a file, just double-click on it – and ownCloud will download it for you.

You can also use some native functions of your file managers, e.g. file name search, without having to download the files or searching them in the web interface.

 

Try it Out!

To test it, you need to download the tech preview client first. In the example we used the test pilot version, so our normal installation stays untouched. You can get it at our download page.

Note: With Linux you need a specific package especially for your file manager. You can get the test pilot daily packages and all dependencies at our openSUSE Build Service repository.

After you have installed it, you must enable experimental features in your config file. A guide on how to edit the config file is in the documentation.