The ability for users to more manually edit/delete/hide their auto-upload media folder connections.

[jcklpe]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.

I find it very annoying that every time any app I use downloads an image nextcloud will then create an auto upload folder connection. Here are some scenerios where the current behavior is a problem:

1. Sometimes I download an app just to try it out, or use it temporarily and then I uninstall it. But even once I uninstall, that doesn't get rid of the left over auto-upload folder connection. Over time this creates lots and lots of auto-upload folders that are useless and may not even be referencing an existing folder on either local or remote.
2. Sometimes apps will create folders that have recognizable media that triggers the creation of an auto upload folder but I don't want these folders auto uploaded nor should they be junking up the auto upload folder connection UI. The nextcloud devs can't really predict where some apps devs might choose to stick folders, and it would be bad design if the installation of one unscruplous app could throw the NC UX into disarray.
   For instance, I have a folder where I store Gameboy ROMs for emulation on my phone. Sometimes the ROM distributors will include a small screenshot picture so that the folders will be easier for a human to visually scan in a desktop file manger program. I don't want 65 individual 125kb images each getting their own auto upload connection and cluttering up the UI.
   Another example, I am subscribed to 137 podcasts, and while I don't listen to them all, all the time, I do have most of them set to auto download the latest episodes when on wifi. If a podcast app chose to cache the album art images to the user's folder then it would be chaos!
3. Sometimes I change my mind about where I want the app to be remotely. In my case, I originally had my camera upload to InstantUploads/Camera on my server. Then I changed my mind and I created a folder called Phone/Camera on my server. I could change the existing auto upload folder, but if I uninstalled and then reinstalled NextCloud it would create 2 auto upload folder connections! One for InstantUpload/Camera and one for Phone/Camera. Very annoying!
4. Sometimes I have a folder that contains many subfolders with media, but I really only need the top layer folder to be identified by the autoupload folder connections. In my case, I have a folder called "Library" in which I put audio books on my server that I want to be then synced over to my phone. But the NextCloud client doesn't set up a folder for "Library", it sets up an auto upload folder connection for every single book in the library, because every book is in it's own sub folders. The auto upload folder connection is triggered by the presence of album art in the folder. This is also a huge problem for people who might want to sync over their Music Library, which I imagine is a really common use case for the NextCloud android client.

Describe the solution you'd like

Currently it is possible to edit folder connections. This is good (though it does not appear to be very persistent as shown by my uninstalling and reinstalling issues mentioned in example 3 above).

It is also possible to set an auto upload folder connection to inactive. This is also a good feature

But it should also be possible to delete/hide inactive connections. Doesn't really matter which, it just needs the ability to reduce the amount of extra chaos added to the UI by all the extra crud.

Describe alternatives you've considered

I have uninstalled the NextCloud android client and set up a bunch of syncing folders with FolderSync [link]

I would prefer to support/use/test the NextCloud client though. The foldersync is not specifically made for NextCloud so it has a more cluttered interface, setting up syncs is less straightforward, and because it relies on a webdav connection the instant sync feature only works when adding or deleting files on the android side of things, and can not work the other way around.

Additional context

A lot of my issues can be tracked by this previous bug report when I originally thought that this was possible and the difficulty in doing this thing was not by design: #3161

Also see related feature request issue here #3239

[nextcloud-android-bot]

GitMate.io thinks possibly related issues are #2281 ([Deleted]), #568 (Auto upload of non media folders?), #3239 (The ability to toggle the automatic creation of auto-upload folders ), #529 (NPE in Auto Upload view finding Media Folders), and #707 (Upload a big file manually or via auto upload with "move to nc folder" ).

[AndyScherzinger]

Hi @nextcloud/designers I'd like to get your inout on this issue. The basic scenario here is that there might be huge amounts of folders containing images/videos/etc. The Auto Upload screen fills this screen based on Android's media index so we show an entry per folder which might be quite a lot and clutters the list.

• So one idea would be to simply offer a "hide" menu item per entry to hide such an folder. This would then hide such a folder and we could offer a hide/show toggle via the toolsbar's menu to show such entries again (if needed).
• another idea would be to have some kind of grouping mechanism just have one entry for the parent folder of such a media folder structure (like for th ementioned podcasts). The problem here is actually rather how to detect such cases since this won't work in a general way. Thinking of the parent camera-folder this would be an issue since we definitely want to give the user the choice to upload photos "per creating app". We might be able to retrieve the info about the "standard" media folder on the device and only group detected folders not being within the standard media folder, but that would need some further investigation.

1. in the issue description is possible rather a bug since I think due to the folder detection notification we now explicitely store such folders in the database when we create the notification so we need to implement some housekeeping so folders that aren't found via the media index anymore and that aren't what we call custom folders (manually created by the users) should simply be deleted when creating the auto upload list.

cc also @mario @tobiasKaminsky @ardevd

[jancborchardt]

I actually have a very similar issue. For me it's the folders for music albums showing up, with each only having one entry – the album cover. Which of course I don't want to sync, or have in the auto upload list.

Now a manual "Hide" function would not work here, as you would have to go through all the podcasts/albums/roms etc and hide them manually. We need an automatic solution.

In the case of music albums, usually the cover file is called cover.jpg or cover.png. Probably similar (but different) for podcasts, rom folders, etc.

Could there be a set of simple exclude rules? Like:

If the folder only contains one image called "cover.jpg/png" (and only music files otherwise), we can assume it's an album and exclude it from auto upload.

[jancborchardt]

And in case someone does want to sync these after all, we could show at the bottom of the list:

Show 37 excluded folders (albums, podcasts, …)

Which then would toggle showing them below.

[AndyScherzinger]

Could there be a set of simple exclude rules? Like:

If the folder only contains one image called "cover.jpg/png" (and only music files otherwise), we can assume it's an album and exclude it from auto upload.

Yes we could probably do such a thing. @jcklpe could you provide some input on your folder structures for podcats, roms, etc?

And in case someone does want to sync these after all, we could show at the bottom of the list:

Show 37 excluded folders (albums, podcasts, …)

Which then would toggle showing them below.

yes that would be possible too, while you then might rather want to configure a custom folder since you want to sync all files within that folder no matter the mime type :)

[AndyScherzinger]

while we can still have both hide/show as described by Jan and custom folders (already in place)

[jcklpe]

I would contend against an automatic solution, or at least for this particular ticket. It is very closely related though. When I first filed a ticket I actually included both this function and the ability to edit the automatic upload rules in the same ticket. I think @jancborchardt makes excellent points and that the issue of the editing of automatic upload rules would be a better fit for the original ticket: #3239 (comment)

To me the focus of this ticket should be just the ability to manually hide/delete already created folders because no matter what automatic rules the user or the NC devs put in place, there is no real predicting what crazy thing any particular app dev might do, and I think it's good to give the user some level of manual control.

Additionally this manual control is very simple, easy for the user to understand, and wouldn't need to add a whole bunch of extra fiddly bits to the UI. And I'm just a designer learning to develop, so I'm not a very good developer yet but I assume it would also be easier to implement.

@AndyScherzinger : Sure thing.

root

• sdcard
  • podcasts
    • backup
      • appbackup.file
      • feedbackup.opml
    • podcast
      • episode.mp4
      • episode.mp4
      • episode.mp4
    • anotherpodcast
      • episode.mp4
      • episode.mp4
      • episode.mp4
  • Arcade
    • SNES
      • Gamefolder
        • game.rom
        • screenshot.png
        • readme.txt
      • Gamefolder
        • game.rom
        • screenshot.png
        • readme.txt
    • Gameboy
      • Gamefolder
        • game.rom
        • screenshot.png
        • readme.txt
      • Gamefolder
        • game.rom
        • screenshot.png
        • readme.txt
  • Ringtones
    • contact ringtones
      • friend.mp4
      • friend2.mp4
    • retroRingtones
      • mario.mp4
      • pacman.mp4
    • randomringtone.mp4
    • ringtone-placed-by-phone-vendor.mp4

[AndyScherzinger]

Thanks for the input @jcklpe - so all the folders you mentioned would be something that you want to be hidden?

auto-hidding for certain scenarios vs. manual hidding option are hard to compare effort-wise since a simple rule for auto-hidding certain folders would be simple to implement,complex rules might be tricky and hard to implement, manual hiding (+ the necessary UI part) is somewhere in between.

So without having an angreed rule definition (which o/c can't be changed by the user) it is hard to tell would needs more effort to be implemented. So that is something we need to agree on first, while I'd also like to have @tobiasKaminsky's feedback on this matter before any implementation work begins.
Unfortunately he won't be able to comment on this matter at the moment. So in order to take his feedback into consideration we need to wait for 2 weeks (sorry for that!).

[jcklpe]

@AndyScherzinger To answer your question, I would want to not sync /podcasts but I would want to sync the contents of /podcasts/backup.

I would want to sync the Arcade folder, but not individually sync the individual game sub folders (which is currently what is happening depending on if they have a screenshot in them).

I would want to sync the Ringtones folder, but not have individual folder connections set up for the sub folders, which is what sometimes happens when I add stuff.