1.4.5: Better communication required

Bugs and issues
#1

I want to complain about my experience with 1.4.5, in particular about the “Sync new children of partial folders” option being deselected by default. I am very confused, and I hope that the following explanation of my confusion can lead to improvements.

For me, the primary purpose of Insync is to synchronize Google Drive with my Linux desktop. I want this process to be automatic. I don’t want to have to constantly check whether or not it’s doing its job.

As far as I could tell, when I was using a previous version of Insync, all files were automatically being both uploaded and downloaded to my desktop. At some point I upgraded to 1.4.5, but I don’t know whether or not this has to do with anything. To my surprise, I just noticed that new files created outside my desktop were not automatically being downloaded to my desktop. I consider this a severe failure of Insync! After searching on the forum, I realized that new files would only be downloaded when I manually select “Sync all items”. After quite a bit of further searching, I realized that files are downloaded automatically if I turn on “Sync new children of partial folders.”

I don’t understand what went wrong, and I am left with so many unanswered questions:

  • What the heck is a “partial folder”?
  • Why is “My Drive” considered a “partial folder”?
  • Why isn’t this option named something understandable like “Automatically download new items”?
  • Was this introduced as new default behavior in 1.4.5?
  • If so, why was I not notified and given the option to select this as my desired behavior? (If I was notified, I somehow missed it.)
  • Is 1.4.5 considered a stable version or a beta version?
  • If 1.4.5 is considered a beta version, then why did I receive a notification that I should upgrade, without a warning?

I am frustrated to have lost over an hour of my time tracking down this issue. While it’s possible I’m completely confused, I feel like the answers to the above questions should be more clear to me. In case I missed something, please let me know. Otherwise, I hope that going forward there can be better communication about these sorts of issues.

You don’t need to answer the questions I ask above. I ask only that these sorts of things are better communicated in the future.

My confusion aside, thanks for making such an excellent product.

1 Like
#2

Hi!

We’re constantly aiming to improve how we communicate with our users (how-to guides, feature updates, etc). So this is really great feedback and I thank you for that! :heart_eyes:

Just to address some questions you raised so as not to leave you hanging (and in case other users have the same questions):

  • Partial folders mean it’s a partially-synced folder with just some of its children (files) set to sync and others unsynced. This is indicated by an orange checkmark in the Files UI
  • It’s a setting that was already in v1.3, but we changed the default behavior on v1.4 (wherein it’s unchecked at first). This is because of the double-click feature that prompts a file to sync. However, good points raised-- I’ve forwarded this to our team for review.
  • 1.4.5 is a stable version. We got out of the beta stage when we released v1.4.3. That explains why you were asked to upgrade. :slight_smile:

We’ll work better at this. Again, thank you so much for taking time to write to us! :smiley:

#3


You sure about that?

#4

Hello @mia! Thank you for your response.

I am still confused about the notion of “partial folder.” I see no orange checkmarks in the Files UI. In particular, there is no orange checkmark by “MY DRIVE”. In other words, there doesn’t seem to be any corresponding setting for my insync root directory, even though Insync seems to treat it as a “partial folder.” Given that I see no orange checkmarks, I would expect that I have no “partial folders” and therefore everything should automatically synchronize regardless of the “Sync new children…” setting.

Thank you for forwarding these issues to the appropriate team members.