Install and connect Nextcloud app to your /e/cloud drive to unveil its true potential

[manish]

Mission:

Install and connect Nextcloud app to /e/cloud drive to be able to perform following things:

• Auto-sync files from a custom folder on your /e/ phone to /e/cloud drive.
• Upload custom files other than Media (Photos and videos).
• Shoot and upload uncompressed pictures directly from your front or back camera.

Prerequisites:

• A phone running /e/OS
• Credentials to your /e/ account

Let’s roll.

1. Install Nextcloud from /e/ Apps Store

Open /e/ Apps Store

Pro tip: Did you notice the green notification dot on the top-left? It indicates there is an unread notification. Check your notification tray!

Tap on Search from bottom menu to look for ‘Nextcloud’.

Install it and open once done.

2. Configure Nextcloud to access your /e/ cloud drive.

Once greeted with home screen, enter ‘ecloud.global’ in the text field and tap on the arrow to continue.

Once asked to “Connect to your /e/ account”, tap ‘Log in’ to continue.

Enter your /e/ account credentials and tap ‘Log in’ to continue.

Tap Grant Access to allow Nextcloud app to access your /e/cloud drive to continue.

Allow Nextcloud to access photos, media and files on your device.

You have successfully connect Nextcloud to your /e/ cloud drive.

3. Sync files from a custom folder from your /e/ phone to /e/cloud drive

Upon successful login of Nextcloud app, from home screen tap on top-left icon to reach ‘Auto-upload’ option.

In ‘Auto-upload’ section, tap on top-right icon to ‘Set up a custom folder’.

‘Create new custom folder setup’ settings appear.

Tap Local folder option therein to ‘Choose’ a folder on your phone. For example, I have selected a folder named Signal.

Tap Remote folder option therein to ‘Choose’ a folder on your /e/ cloud drive. I have chosen to use root for the purpose of this guide.

Pro tip: You should untick ‘Only upload on unmetered Wi-Fi’ option for obvious reasons provided that you have a good data plan or if you do not Wi-Fi only. Other option that you might want to tick is ‘Only upload when charging’ if you travel a lot and prefer to save battery.

Tap ‘Save’ in the bottom to finalize custom folder sync setup.

This might conflict with battery optimization, so tap on ‘DISABLE’ to exclude this app in order to avail robust sync of your custom folder in background.

Yes, Allow to Let app always run in background. Tap ‘Allow’ to continue.

Once done, now all the files from Local folder will auto-upload in background to your /e/ cloud drive.

4. Upload custom files

In the home screen, tap on the bottom-right ‘+’ icon in blue to open upload options as seen in the image below.

Tap on ‘Upload files’ to selected one or multiple files from your phone and tap ‘Upload’ from bottom-right to start the process.

Upload progress should appear in the notification tray immediately. Once complete, you can access these files from any device using your /e/ cloud drive.

Pro tip: It is best to create a new folder by tapping on ‘Create new folder’ option from the Nextcloud upload menu to sort out your uploaded files.

5. Shoot and upload uncompressed pics directly from your phone camera

In the home screen, tap on the bottom-right ‘+’ icon in blue to open Nextcloud upload options again as seen in the 4th step.

Tap on ‘Upload from camera’ to continue.

‘Allow’ camera access to the Nextcloud app to avail this function.

Once the camera is ready, select the back or front camera and click a picture. Tap on the big ‘blue tick’ mark to upload or the icon to the left to retry.

An uncompressed picture or image is uploaded and appears in your /e/ cloud drive now.

Pro tip: This upload method can really help some of the professionals like investigative journalists etc

Thanks for reading!

[smu44]

Thanks for your very nice guides, comprehensive and easy to read !

[manish]

Nothing but a repercussion of your blessings and beautiful words. Thanks! Much appreciated.

[archje]

Hej @manish, thank you very much for writing this manual. I’m sure it will be read often and because of the easy to understand presentation it can be used also by “normal” users like user like “Mom and Dad”.

[manish]

Yes. More to come soon! Your beautiful words mean a lot to me. Thanks too!

[fab]

Thank you for your easy-to-understand manuals! I’ve read them all!
Stay healthy!

[manish]

Thank you for your kind and generous words. It forms a significant part of inspiration to work on these guides. Much appreciated.

[Pablo]

Thank you very much. Such a nice manual¡

[sugit]

I am trying to use the NextCloud app, and seemed succesful with these instructions.
But I am running into trouble: I try to use this especially because I wanted to save my photos to the SDcard instead. But then I got into trouble: photos did not get synced, screenshots did not get synced. For other files, the app continually says there are conflicting versions.
So I de-installed the app again. But now still photos and screenshots do not get synced at all anymore.
I assume there is also a NextCloud synd working on the /e/OS, right? How can I reset that to it’s original settings?
thanks!

[harvey186]

@sugit

How can I reset that to it’s original settings?

remove your /e/ account from Settings/Accounts/

[DelJen]

Thanks for the guide.

I noticed that after setting up the NextCloud App the remote eDrive filesystem can be viewed in the ‘Files’ App. In ‘Files’ click on the hamburger, and at the bottom will be a mount point called NextCloud.

[sugit]

So in the last week I have been trying to get back to the original settings: de-installed the NextCloud app, trying to sync photos, videos and screenshots to eCloud.
So far, I have been unsuccessful. Anonyme is now putting it on gitlab. I have solved the problem by re-installing the app and setting up syncing there.

I think a warning is important: If you install the NextCloud app, it may be that you can not go back to the situation without that app.
At least for a Samsung S7 on /e/OS-Nougat.

[Cameleopard]

Hi,
Since I’ve installed and sync e.account with nextcloud to my phone, I see the other folders into my nextcloud app : Document, Ringtones, Devices etc. which I don’t want to synchronize.
How can I remove this folders from my app (which also now appear on the web version) ?

[Anonyme]

Hi @Cameleopard, welcome in the forum

Have a look at the following HOWTO if you would like to disable the synchronization of some elements:

Disable /e/Cloud's automatic sync of Contacts and/or Media (Photos and videos)

Mission: To disable automatic sync of Contacts, Photos and Videos from your smartphone to /e/Cloud. It is turned on by default for ease of use as of yet. The following instructions will definitely help you keep it local. Prerequisites: A phone running /e/OS and configured with /e/ account Let’s roll. Open /e/OS Settings to access Accounts settings [2] [2] Tap on your /e/ account to enter the Account sync settings [3] [4] In Account Sync settings, you can turn OFF for the Sync …

[KNR]

Hi, I am new to the community. Trying to install Nextcloud, but the Apps, logos, “unkonwns”, the “Dev” in the Appstore confuse me.
Which one is the right one?
Help appreciated.

[petefoth]

Firstly, I suggest installing the NextCloud app from F-Droid rather than from /e/'s Apps store: you will see more information, and will receive app updates more promptly.

The app you need is the NextCloud synchronization client: I think that is the first one in your list, but it’s hard to tell from the limited information is that screenshot. In this screenshot (taken from F-Droid app), it is the sixth item in the list, showing version number 3.17.0, which is the most recent stable release.

You don’t want ‘Nextcloud Dev’: that is experimental, and only for people who want early visibility of new features (even if they don’t work fully), and are prepared to put up with possible ‘breaking’ changes

[inubu]

I agree with @petefoth. f-droid is much better. Simply not so much odd apps. But it’s the app without the logo.
One thing I want to mention to everyone, because I had the problem. You have to know that /e/ os has already some nextcloud sync build in. And if you use the ecloud with /e/ os it syncs your photos and videos.
You see that in account sync settings.

Right on the bottom you see Pictures and videos, which I disabled.
The issue was, that I had some Uploadrules configured in the nextcloud app and always got the notification, that the picture already existed. At first I thought it’s a bug in the nextcloud app. But no, it’s not. In /e/ os 0.17 this ecloud file sync feature didn’t work for me, so I didn’t noticed it. And it took me a few weeks to figure it out.
So I hope this helped some of you. And as it’s not mentioned in the first post of this thread, I wanted to add it.

[tcecyk]

the “unkown” author display is unfortunate, it’s an easy fix that starts in the fdroid build metadata with AuthorName. Then cleanapk has to pick it up. At least the Deck should show the author info. Needs some angel work I guess

[HenkK]

Thank you, this was very helpful.

I recently bought a Murena GS290 and came across the sync problems.

I downloaded Nextcloud 3.17.1 from F-Droid. The ‘Auto Upload’ is now under ‘Settings’.

[HenkK]

I don’t like the idea of two separate sync services syncing to the same (/e/) Nextcloud cloud storage.

So I started an extra free Nextcloud cloud storage somewhere for ‘auto upload’ syncing audio and images, and linked it also to my laptop.