Using the Desktop App

The status indicator uses icons to indicate the current status of your synchronization. The green circle with the white checkmark tells you that your synchronization is current and you are connected to your ownCloud server.

The blue icon with the white semi-circles means synchronization is in progress.

The yellow icon with the parallel lines tells you your synchronization has been paused. (Most likely by you.)

The gray icon with three white dots means your Desktop App has lost its connection with your ownCloud server.

When you see a white circle with the letter "i" that is the informational icon, so you should click it to see what it has to tell you.

The red circle with the white "x" indicates a configuration error, such as an incorrect login or server URL.

A right-click on the systray icon opens a menu for quick access to multiple operations.

This menu provides quick access to options like:

A left-click on your systray icon opens the Desktop App to the account settings window.

The ownCloud Desktop App provides overlay icons, if not using the VFS feature, in addition to the normal file type icons, for your system file manager (Explorer on Windows, Finder on Mac and Nautilus on Linux) to indicate the sync status of your ownCloud files.

The overlay icons are similar to the systray icons introduced above. They behave differently on files and directories according to sync status and errors.

The overlay icon of an individual file indicates its current sync state. If the file is in sync with the server version, it displays a green checkmark.

If the file is ignored while syncing, for example because it is on your exclude list or because it is a symbolic link, it displays a warning icon.

If there is a sync error, or the file is blacklisted, it displays an eye-catching red X. If the file is waiting to be synced, or is currently being synced, the overlay icon displays a blue cycling icon.

When the Desktop App is offline, no icons are shown to reflect that the folder is currently out of sync and no changes are synced to the server.

The overlay icon of a synced directory indicates the status of the files in the directory. If there are any sync errors, the directory is marked with a warning icon.

If a directory includes ignored files that are marked with warning icons that does not change the status of the parent directory.

The connection wizard is always shown when the Desktop app has been started and no synchronization connection has been set up so far or when clicking the Add Account button. It takes you step-by-step through configuration options and account setup.

You may configure multiple ownCloud accounts in your Desktop app. Simply click the Account  Add New button on the top left and follow the Connection Wizard. The new account will appear as a new item in the main window on top.

To remove an account, select the account to be removed and click on the button Account  Remove to remove it. Note that the account will be removed but no synchronized data deleted.

The settings tab contains common settings available and valid for all accounts configured. Here you can define network settings, bandwidth limitations, a confirmation setting to limit folder synchronization size and more.

At the top of the window are tabs for each configured synchronization account and two more for Activity and Settings. Selecting one account, you have the following features available:

The little button with three dots (the overflow menu) that sits to the right of the sync status bar offers four additional options:

Synchronization happens on a regular basis and connects to the server every few minutes. A connection loss can occur when the network cable is unplugged or when switching to a different wireless network. In such a case a manual force reconnect button becomes available in case you want to immediately restart syncing for an account and not wait for an automatic reconnect. This button only becomes available if the Desktop app is in reconnection state.

To manually force reconnecting for an account, select the account and click Account  Reconnect.

If there is data to be synced immediately, like when you are on the road and need to continue working offline, you can force syncing a folder of an account before the network connection goes offline. To do so, select the account and then the folder to force sync and the Three Dots  Force sync now button.

Spaces are only available when connected to an Infinite Scale backend. In most cases, they are similar to folders or external mounts when the backend is ownCloud Server and one might not see differences, though some exist:

When an account gets added the first time, you can select which remote resources you want to synchronize. This includes the syncronization type which defaults to VFS if available on your operating system (OS) or selective sync where you manually select the resoures to be synchronized otherwise. These resources are represented by the Desktop app as local folders using the base path defined during account setup. Depending on the backend connected, resources shown can be the full external mount or a folder inside an external mount when using ownCloud Server, or spaces when using Infinite Scale.

If VFS is available for your OS but selective sync has been chosen, you can at any time switch to VFS and vice versa. Note to check the available disk space before switching from VFS to selective sync (Disable Virtual File support).

The base path defined on first sync is not the only path that can be used. Resources can have their individual base path. This is can be beneficial if you want selected resources to be located on different paths than the default.

The desktop client will display notifications from your ownCloud server that require manual interaction. It automatically checks for available notifications automatically on a regular basis. Notifications are displayed in the Server Activity tab. If you have enabled Settings  General Settings  Show Desktop Notifications you’ll also see a systray notification.

For example, when a user on a remote ownCloud creates a new Federated share for you, you can accept it from your desktop client. This also displays notifications sent to users by the ownCloud admin via the Announcements app.

This is only valid if not using the VFS feature.

The Network settings window enables you to define network proxy settings and defines limits to the download and upload bandwidth.

You might have some local files or directories that you do not want to backup and store on the server. To identify and exclude these files or directories, you can use the Settings  Advanced  Ignored Files Editor.

For your convenience, the editor is pre-populated with a default list of typical ignore patterns. These patterns are contained in a system file. (typically sync-exclude.lst) located in the ownCloud Desktop app directory. You cannot modify these pre-populated patterns directly from the editor. However, if necessary, you can hover over any pattern in the list to show the path and filename associated with that pattern, locate the file, and edit the sync-exclude.lst file.

Each line in the editor contains an ignore pattern string. When creating custom patterns, in addition to being able to use normal characters to define an ignore pattern, you can use wildcards characters for matching values. As an example, you can use an asterisk (*) to identify an arbitrary number of characters or a question mark (?) to identify a single character.

Patterns that end with a slash character (/) are applied to only directory components of the path being checked.

Each pattern string in the list is preceded by a checkbox. When the checkbox contains a check mark, in addition to ignoring the file or directory component matched by the pattern, any matched files are also deemed "fleeting metadata" and removed by the client.

In addition to excluding files and directories that use patterns defined in this list:

For more detailed information see the Ignored Files section.