I turn off synchronisation but my Murena keeps synching photos and other files with my cloud account! I cannot believe that the biggest problem I have since switching from Samsung with Google Android is that Murena DOES NOT DO WHAT I REQUEST! I DO NOT WANT MY DATA IN THE CLOUD, MAKE IT EASIER TO AVOID THE CLOUD SYNCH!
IF THIS CONTINUES I WILL ABANDON MURENA AND FAIRPHONE ALTOGETHER!
Regain your privacy! Adopt /e/OS the deGoogled mobile OS and online services
Delete your Murena account from the Settings. That’s all.
You still own it, you can still use it (for Mail or manual file upload or whatever) but your device can’t brainless sync anymore.
Easy solution, isn’t it. Next time you run into a problem, please just ask for a lead. There is no need to scream ALL CAPS at everybody. This is the nicest forum I have ever been on, mostly users helping users, and it would be great if we could all keep this level of netiquette.
I have exactly the same problem with my new phone. I am surprised that there seems to be no way to switch off the synching of the Music directory, which immediately filled up my cloud storage. (I saw some forum comment saying that was easy, but I only seem to have the option for eight categories, like e.g. pictures and videos, but not music.) Are you saying that if I delete my account at murena.io the automatic synching goes away but I can still access my 1 GB of cloud storage manually. Do I not need an account for such access? Are there no ill side-effects of deleting ones account?
Thanks!
Obviously if you delete your account at murena.io you won’t be able to get in to look at any files and all data stored there would be deleted upon account removal anyway. They’re talking about removing the account on your phone.
Of course removing the account on your phone removes access to Murena services. Though you don’t -have- to use Murena services, an alternative would be Proton or Nextcloud.
May I emphasize thar the phone can be used with any account and apps can be installed, etc.
The alternatives imply instead a bit, not NONE at all
You have an account and you keep it. The account is a server thing. When you delete the “account” from your device you delete only an information telling your device that you have an account with that name and that password on that concrete server. The server side account will not be affected at all by this deletion and remains full working. Note: you can also recreate an “account” on the device, so you can also switch the device using exactly the same Murena cloud environment.
After deletion of your “account” from the device you can still set up a full working e-mail client (like the stock Mail app) running on the Murena IMAP- and SMTP-servers. Look, you can also set up an e-mail-client on a PC or from Linux in the same way, you need only the server side account. And you can use your browser (on your mobile or on PC) to login on the Murena Cloud storage where you can upload and download files as you want. Not sure about calendar, I guess for a working calendar with cloud storage you need the “account” on the device.
But one thing is for sure: when you delete your “account” from your mobile the device loses all knowledge about this server side account and strictly can’t synchronize anymore.
Thanks for clarifying! Just to be positively sure: “Murena services” does not include things like updates to the OS or apps via App Lounge, just personal cloud storage?
If I remove the account on the device, can I add it again later if the synching capabilities improve?
Sorry for these newbie questions; I hope they might also help someone else!
Yes, sure. As it has already been said: you can run an /e/OS phone completely (including OS updates and installing and updating apps and all that) without having a cloud account. I have this for years. You can skip this cloud thing during setup, there’s now a minor “Skip” button.
Hi, thanks for the reply and you have a fair point, I should be a bit more moderate and not post in ALL CAPS. e/OS does however market itself with all caps, that MY data are MY data, and this mechanism of filling up your cloud storage without the option to turn it off (so you’ll have to pay for upgraded cloud storage or scream like a fool in the online forum) is exactly like the tactics of the Big Tech companies I want to avoid (except even less user friendly). That’s why I think my issue warrants a strong reaction. I can see from this thread that others have this issue too. That being said, your point about netiquette is read and received and I agree with you.
Thanks for offering this solution, but I find this highly unsatisfactory. I want to be able to upload something to my cloud environment if or when I choose to, not have everything or nothing. The technology to solve my problem exists for years already, it’s not difficult to solve, it is purely cynical to try to push me into their payment model on cloud storage. I expected much better from an organisation that presents itself as a more human-centric tech solution than the Big Tech companies. MY data is clearly not MINE to control on my Murena, which is a painful realisation about a tech product I had very high hopes for.
I’m confused. I have a Murena account attached to my phone and it only syncs calendar and contacts.
I have music, photos, documents, etc.on my phone and none of it is on my cloud account. Granted, I dont have Nextcloud or any similar apps installed.
Have you experimented with Settings > Accounts >Auto Sync app data toggled off.
I would especially expect that a new user who couples his new flashed device for the first time with the Murena cloud doesn’t get a free space exhausted error message within hours because this mechanism pumps all the music files. This is indeed not needed at all and reputation damaging especially because it would be a very simple thing taking only a few minutes to fix these default settings: Synchronization OFF by default! What’s so difficult to let the user decide first what he wants? I mean before something definitely nobody wants does happen.
Nobody (!) needs music files in the cloud anymore. This has been an idea Apple had 15 years ago when they told the user he needs multiple different devices (iPhone, iPod, iPad) for different purposes and they needed a mechanism to synchronize them without thinking. But today this is not the reality, nobody uses an iPod anymore. The second fact is: the offered 1GB is much less most people have in their music library, so it nearly always (!) fails. A promising combination: nobody needs it and it always fails.
And what then? At first the user is frustrated about his new device, he must ask here what happened, he must stop this nonsense and he must clean up the mess. Even more: if he has still a data limitation (I had 500MB per month for years and never reached it until the first day on /e/) he has a good chance to achieve a violation. If he has roaming costs (like most Swiss providers still demand) and this synchronization starts for any reason in a foreign country this can get really expensive.
Thank you for your insight. Surely it would be better to offer synchronisation as an opt-in rather than an opt-out.
/e/ has always been a balancing act in trying to combine the greatest possible functionality, accessibility and convenience with the greatest possible data protection. Now /e/ obviously wants to step out of the corner of the nerdy niche product and develop into a mainstream alternative. In principle, this is to be welcomed, but it also harbours some risks, as can be seen from the hasty and faulty implementation of MGM, which is causing problems for some users. This is certainly fuelled by the shameless bigotry of BigTech that has now finally come to broad daylight under the second Trump administration, which is also making people aware of the problem who have hardly thought about it before and are now looking for alternatives. These people are used to the convenience and versatility of their stock ROMs and have completely different demands and expectations towards an OS, which has recently become increasingly clear in this forum, where everything from tech specialists to absolute noobs is represented. But with friendliness and helpfulness we will be able to deal with this and with each other.
It remains to be seen how /e/s’ streamlining process will develop. There will certainly be more hick-ups. But I am confident 
.
I’ve created a ticket on github: