There are a couple of components to this idea…
- Be able to select a folder in the synching menu of the desktop clients to ‘sync down’ without selecting any of its contents, effectively creating a ghost folder
=> Allows users to create new files in existing Drive folders without needing to sync any items. - Be able to do a sync + clean
=> Allows users to have an Insync managed folder they can just drop things in to ‘upload’ them to Drive. Insync uploads it, cleans the desktop version out and updates syncing preferences to /not/ sync that thing back down, non-destructively of course. - Bonus feature to 2. Desktop Expire Setting
=> Allows users to set a default time period before a file goes through the cleanup process mentioned in # 2. This would allow users to delete/rename/etc mistakes before they get frustrated about having to go onto Drive to correct it. Also would help with sync thrashing. - A mode for turning on your ghost folders (account by account basis)
=> This could be implemented two ways. One that just assumes you want everything to be a ‘ghost folder’. The other way is to enable #1 while in this mode and that any folders configured as ghost folders are what get enabled/disabled when using this toggle.
The sync+clean feature and the ghost folder idea have value separately and together, so it would be important to design the settings to be orthogonal to each other. To cater to both the typical user and the power user so as to not overwhelm people, you could consolidate/arrange these into common/popular workflow features in basic settings, and then allow power users to override and get full orthogonal control in advanced settings.
While these features are very complex, it shouldn’t be overly complex for the user. Most of this can be buried under the hood and have natural UI controls that can be capitalizes on to expand the interaction vernacular (i.e. allowing people to check the folder but not have anything below selected feels right to users and does what they expect).
