Add a mechanism to manually probe for new changes for autouploading

[Cogitri]

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

Many users have the problem that Nextcloud is killed in the background and as such doesn't properly autoupload files. Sometimes it's not possible to disable that battery optimisation, so it'd be nice if it was possible to at least tell Nextcloud to check for changes manually so it uploads the file

Describe the solution you'd like

A button in the UI to check for changes to upload

Describe alternatives you've considered

None, I don't think this can be solved differently

I think #1328 describes something similar but I can't find the mentioned "force sync" button.

[adrien-n]

I've started to use nextcloud recently and I'm having lots of troubles with auto-upload in the android app. Maybe it's my phone, Android, its configuration, whatever the OEM did to it, or something else but a "Trigger Now" menu entry in the auto-upload configuration screen would be simple enough and would avoid the problem. After getting already-existing files initially pushed and also getting new ones to be pushed, auto-upload has stopped doing anything. I've tried everything (no battery optimization, allowed to run in the background, app locked in the drawer, battery charged to 100%, app [force-]stopped and started again, .......) and nothing happened at all.

Maybe I've not configured something properly. The crux of the issue is that I have no practical way to know. Since auto-upload triggers in the future, the user feedback for the configuration is also in the future. Right now it seems that means waiting an unknown amount of time in order to see the effects of configuration changes. I've actually spent more than two days waiting for the auto-upload to trigger before commenting here. A button is really needed.

[joshtrichards]

The main approach taken has been to address the underlying causes that leads to these situations. A button just covers the problem. #4787 and #4788 and numerous others should have improved the behavior under these circumstances.

How are things for you today, @Cogitri?

[Cogitri]

I have to admit that I've switched platforms in the meantime and as such don't use the Android app anymore. However, I think it's a very common pattern in all sorts of apps to be able to explicitly refresh (either with a button or by pulling down to refresh). But I can also understand not wanting to pollute the UI with a button that shouldn't be necessary if everything works as expected

[adrien-n]

I've managed to get this working well enough over time: I keep nextcloud in the foreground with battery saver mode off. After some time (worst case 20 minutes but typically 5 minutes or less), it will trigger.

I still think buttons to trigger otherwise-automatic synchronizations are useful nonetheless since it's virtually impossible for users to understand what happens: something supposedly automatic doesn't happen, what do you do when you don't even know the trigger rules? Actually a diagnostic would work almost the same: which jobs are expected to run but aren't being run?

I should mention that I have kept the same phone until now but that I've broken it a couple days ago and that the replacement is on its way and is a fairphone, which should hopefully be more sensible than oneplus.

[bjoern-tantau]

A user-story for this issue:

My wife wants to remove old files from our daughter's phone to free up space. She checks the Nextcloud app and sees that files from the last few months haven't been uploaded for whatever reason.

An "Upload Now" button would give her the peace of mind that the app is going to do its job in a timely manner.

[cweiske]

Another user story:
I took a photo and want to attach it to an e-mail on my PC now.
Auto upload of the photo on my Android 14 phone (LineageOS 21) with Nextcloud 3.29.0 triggered only after around 15 minutes.

A force-sync-now button would have given me the option to continue with my email sending task instead of waiting until Nextcloud picks up the change sometime in the future.

[joshtrichards]

Related: #7019

[nroach44]

I would like to add a comment about

The main approach taken has been to address the underlying causes that leads to these situations. A button just covers the problem.

I truly believe this to be a fool's errand. There will never be an end to OEM/Google meddling in the power saving systems of Android.

I've been using android since 2.2 and it's only ever gotten worse.

What would help right now for problems that people are having right now is some way to check if there are files that haven't been uploaded, and upload them.

[gitsbydeerskin]

The main approach taken has been to address the underlying causes that leads to these situations. A button just covers the problem. #4787 and #4788 and numerous others should have improved the behavior under these circumstances.

How are things for you today, @Cogitri?

Your resistence to adding a very simple workaround that people actually want is ridiculous. This has been an on-going issue on Andoid for years at this point and it's not going to get better. Opening Nextcloud to try and force it to sync files it's missed doesn't work, but there's also no way to manually sync stuff either. And yet if there was, it would literally solve this problem.

Just add a button. You cannot fix the underlying problem. You never have. You never will be able to. Android is just going to obfuscate their ecosystem further. But a single button would literally fix this issue. And yet you refuse to add it. Why?