What feature do you want us to work on? + Product Updates

Feature requests
#1
What do you want us to work on?
  • Amazon S3
  • Amazon Glacier
  • Google Photos
  • Encryption
  • Bandwidth control
  • ARM64 support
  • Sync on demand
  • Others

0 voters

Hi guys! Just a brief update on what the team has been up to.

WHAT WE’RE WORKING ON:

Dropbox is coming. This has been one of the most requested cloud providers by the community and we’re excited to say that we will release Dropbox this summer!

More sync details. The team is adding a UI feature that would give you more information on how many files are currently syncing versus how many files are left.

Squashing more bugs. Aside from the new features, the team has been hard at work fixing issues that you or the team find. In this cycle, we’re aiming to fix a OneDrive issue that happens when concurrently uploading large files as well as other issues that we’ve encountered.

WHAT’S NEXT?

We’ve been thinking about a couple of projects for our next phase, but we want to know what you think! Tell us which among the features listed below you want us to work on next and why!

4 Likes
Pantheon Files Integration
#2
#3

With the Raspberry Pi 4/400 getting more desktop support (Ubuntu, Manjaro, Raspberry Pi OS, etc.), having Insync available for ARM64 devices would be a definite plus!

I have a Raspberry Pi 400 running Ubuntu and would definitely appreciate easy syncing to my cloud accounts.

1 Like
#4

We’ve been getting a lot of requests for ARM64 support as of late and it’s definitely gotten our attention!

Who else wants ARM64 support?

3 Likes
#5

What does “Sync on demand” mean here? Is this what other cloud providers cal “Smart Sync” eg where we would be able to access files on the cloud as if they were local files, but without needing to actually have them strored on our devices? That for me would be the most important feature, especially since there is currently no sync application/service that supports this cross-platform.

As for cloud services, I think Dropbox would be cool to add, but I don’t see much use in S3/Glacier since they would be much more expensive than the likes of Google Drive and Dropbox and not nearly as useful for the average user. What I would be very interested in is if InSync could be used as a sync client for NextCloud! Being able to have Google Drive and NextCloud syncing in a single client would be a killer combo for me, especially in combination with some sort of “Smart Sync”-like functionality.

1 Like
#7

Yup, that’s exactly right.

NextCloud is an interesting choice! I’m curious though, what’s your use-case for Google Drive and NextCloud? Why the combination of Google Drive and NextCloud? What does your workflow look like?

#8

I store my documents on Google Drive, because I like Google Docs/Sheets/Slides/… and it means I can mix-and-match regular files with Google Docs documents.

The reason I specifically like NextCloud is because there are several providers out there that cloud-host it, as well as I can self-host it. NextCloud, and even its external hosting providers, tend to be fairly privacy-focused, so I can keep in control of where my data that I would sync with NextCloud ends up.

I use synced cloud storage for 3 main purposes;

  • Synchronising data between my computers, so that it is available on all of them
  • Having my files available in the cloud, so that if I am on the go I can access files that would otherwise be on my desktop computer at home, from my phone or laptop or even someone else’s computer so long as I can log into my cloud storage
    • This data is not data that I want to synchronise to all of my machines, but I would like to have it available when I am on the go, in case I need it (this has come in handy many times). This does unfortunately mean that I would have to synchronise a large volume of potentially personal data to a cloud provider, and the main big cloud providers aren’t exactly know for being privacy-friendly (and regardless of this, data leaks are still a risk). It gives me piece of mind to be able to host this with any company that offers hosted NextCloud, or even on a device of my own running NextCloud.
  • As a backup, in case a device or its storage medium suddenly dies.
    • This goes hand-in-hand with the above, but for this purpose specifically it would be nice to be able to sync data to a device on my local network, as uploads to the wider internet tend to be very slow and this data doesn’t really need to leave my local network anyway. Self-hosted NextCloud is a nice option for this.

So for me, my ideal setup would look like this;

  • Google Drive for my documents
  • Hosted NextCloud to sync all of my files to, so that I can access them on the go without them living in Google’s/Dropbox’s/Microsoft’s ecosystem
    • “Smart Sync” is a nice extra here, because it means I can see and access all this data on all of my devices without taking up precious storage space on my laptop.
  • Self-hosted NextCloud to sync personal data or backups to that don’t need to leave my local network – this is probably also a large volume of data so syncing to a cloud service would be very slow.
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#9

I voted ‘Others’. Honestly, I just would like to be able to use the same local filesystem destination for sync under any OS. That is, sync reliably to ‘d:\Google Drive’ under Windows, or ‘/mnt/D/Google Drive’ under Linux, which are the same file system entity on both.

It would be so helpful when dealing with dual or triple boot situations. It seemed like this was being considered, but it’s gone quiet since then : New Insync version 3.3.4

2 Likes
#10

While I’m not the direct recipient of the question, Nextcloud makes sense for me too.

My reason is much simpler: Our office allows personal files to be present in our systems and we have an internal Nextcloud instance for document management.

In my case InSync (in theory) allows me to use a single client for all my cloud needs:

  • Personal
    • Dropbox
    • Google Drive
    • Google Photos (when it arrives)
  • Work
    • Another Google Drive
    • NextCloud

I’d love to install and use a single client for all of my cloud accounts. Also, if you can deliver smart sync for Dropbox on Linux, it’d be a serious motivator for them (not that I’d switch back to official client). Dropbox is treating Linux as a third class citizen for some time.

3 Likes
#11

Also, if you can deliver smart sync for Dropbox on Linux, it’d be a serious motivator for them (not that I’d switch back to official client). Dropbox is treating Linux as a third class citizen for some time.

Agreed. I used Dropbox for Linux for many many years and I ended up switching to GDrive + InSync. I was very reluctant to pay Google for a cloud service that they do not provide a cross-platform sync client for (under the motto of “vote with your wallet”), but I figured GDrive + InSync was a better option than Dropbox where the only updates they’ve done to their Linux client over the past 10 years have been to remove features, while bugs that were present 10 years ago still exist to this day. I prefer giving my money to smaller developers like InSync that actually have a vested interest in making a good product, instead. “Smart Sync” in a cross-platform cross-cloud sync client would be a killer feature.

#12

This is just a thought I’ve ben having for some time and I don’t know how practical this is (it depends on how the abstractions in InSync’s codebase work), but for me it’d be really cool if InSync could work on a “plugin”-based model, where InSync provides the sync client itself and the basic integrations (GDrive, OneDrive, Dropbox, …) but third-party developers (like myself) could write integrations for different cloud services and make them available to other users. This is probably a huge stretch, but it would allow InSync to gain true compatibility with pretty much every cloud storage provider out there.

Failing that, take my vote for NextCloud + pCloud integrations :stuck_out_tongue: The more cloud storage services the better (so long as the core product doesn’t suffer from it.)

#13

Nextcloud and Google Photos for me. I currently use rclone for this and while it works, the user experience is slightly less than satisfactory. Nextcloud support would have me switch back to inSync in a heartbeat.

1 Like
#14

I would greatly appreciate ARM64 support for ARM-based windows devices! Running the app in emulation works well enough, but it does sip up battery quite a lot during so.

Also, I’d Insync to pause updates when in battery saving mode like what OneDrive does.

#15

Delta Sync/Differential Sync.

I work with large files. Having to re-upload a 100M-1G file every time I make a small edit really prevents me from using Insync as a “single sync client”

#16

Pleaseeee allow to disable adding an extension to extensionless files based on their MIME type on Google Drive!
insync --disable_adding_extensions_to_extensionlessfiles=true
would be fine by me!

#17

It would be good in my opinion if you fixed the UI/UX

1 Like
#18

Valid point raised, @efnats! What areas in the UI/UX have you found that need improvement?

#19

Please work on the flatpak option for Linux. A previous user in the forums has already given you a small list of changes that need to be made. Flatpaks are portable (runs on nearly every distro) and secure (sandboxed). I’m running an immutable system so I can’t use the rpm for installation.

1 Like
#20

Yes - M1 native code (ARM64).

Also - more insight into the sync status. I’ve shared this in another thread and Mia has captured it. Basically, be able to see how many MBs, or even better how much time, is left in the sync queue. The current sync pullup is “interesting” but because the scroll bar refreshes constantly, the screen jumps all over the place and you can’t actually see what’s happening.

2 Likes
#21

Honestly, InSync as an amazing application, and I love it more everyday, but it can be much better with some quality of life enhancements.

  • A more detailed sync view (remaining amount, total file count), as Dan told.
  • Notification snooze capability.
  • Complete fix of macOS memory leak problems (it’s also getting relevant to me, since there’s a migration for me at the horizon).
  • Some more functions at tray menu

etc.

2 Likes