[Now Implemented!] Selective Sync

[robert-info]

I would love to sync just a part of an share.

For example;

Let S1 be a share containing directories porject1 and project2.

S1

|->project1

|->project2

Another computer should able to sync just the directory project1 without syncing project2 from S1 and without configure up a new share.

In this case you can quickly access a part of an share with less adminitration.

[johnmarshall4]

Selective Sync

I would like better control of what syncs on various devices without always having to create a bunch of separate shares (secrets). This is the kind of implementation I imagine:

1. Under the folder preferences you would have an option for selective sync.
2. By default, selective sync would be off. Any new sub-folders added on a remote device would be automatically be synced (today's behavior).
3. If selective sync were turned on there would be a check list of sub-folders available for the user to select to be synced. **Any new sub-folders added on a remote device would NOT automatically be synced. The user would have to modify the folder preferences again and check the new folder.

This would be very helpful to me in the case where I have remote devices at a different location, but some of them don't have a lot of space. I could add additional folders of files to an existing share and get the sync started on the 'normal' machines without filling up the 'limited' devices. Today I have to do this with different shares.

Note: that .syncignore will not give me this functionality, I want 'opt-in' to folders when enabled. Currently .syncignore requires modifications on all the devices to opt-out.

[descention]

I would love to sync just a part of an share.

For example;

Let S1 be a share containing directories porject1 and project2.

S1

|->project1

|->project2

Another computer should able to sync just the directory project1 without syncing project2 from S1 and without configure up a new share.

In this case you can quickly access a part of an share with less adminitration.

I would also like to vote for this.

[ak_tone]

a strong +1 for Selective Sync as described in post #53

thank you very much for this great app guys!!!

[abbott]

+1 for selective synch within recursive directories.

such a powerful feature!

[Automatic Coding]

+1 for selective synch within recursive directories.

such a powerful feature!

Both a whitelist selective sync and a blacklist selective sync. When a program only supports one or the other it pisses me off.

[Morethought]

I would love the ability to be able to selectively choose which files I would like to obtain at a new device/location rather than have to get a complete mirror. Similarly to how with downloading a torrent file you can opt to not download certain files and only download the things you need.

[arlynculwick]

I'd like to sync specific files and not just entire folders. My usage scenario is as follows:

- I have a microserver running Windows 8 that stores a primary copy of all my files - more stuff than any of my other devices can.

- I sync certain files and folders to a given computer as necessary.

- My library of photographs, for example, is larger than my tablet's hard drive, so I'd like to only sync a few photos, and not the entire folder.

The sort of selective sync I'm requesting here is well implemented in Windows 8's Sync Center: right click on a file, click "make available offline", and your device will automatically copy the file over one's home network. It's a very flexible solution.

However Sync Center only works over a home network, and this is where BitTorrent Sync can top it. To be able to sync select files, of any size, no matter where I am in the world, would be amazing.

Thanks

Arlyn

[sniglet]

I would just like to put my vote in for a selective sync feature, similar to what I've seen several other people request on the wishlist.

The selective sync feature would allow users to choose to download only selected folders or files that are stored on other systems. This is important for mobile devices where you might not have enough storage to sync all the files that you are already syncing across higher capacity PCs.

[redge76]

1) Selective sync for desktop clients. Specifically - clients should be able to browse the full file list available from all remote shares and then selectively download what is required without doing a full sync.

Ohhh Yes please. the rest can wait !....

[phktgmis]

I want to "vote" for a selective sync feature.

[JooJ]

As I asked in the forum I would like to have a choice to download individual files on a desktop, not to sync with everything.

I have a lot of stuff that I want to share if my brother and it is a pain to make indivual keys for each type of file.

Thanks!

[spoo]

I have the following request/wish for the awesome, almighty & sexy development team   

wish: option to turn off folder autosync for Windows/Mac/Desktop Client (like mobile app) to be able to access large folders without having to sync the whole folder.

 

reason: for performance reasons as well as simply not having enough storage space on client

e.g. when accessing a distributed linux/NAS archive folder on a small desktop to retrieve single specific files to work with

[stanha]

Selective sync and propagation

This seems to be a topic of concern to quite a few people and it is an important issue.

There is a need to chose which exact files to exclude from syncing. For example, you might have some notes, some files containing private and/or non-public information, or other files that are not a part of distributable information. Or you may have the temporary files, such as raw text version of the html pages that you use as a scratchpad or the original source.

You would not want to propagate these files from the master (r/w) node to any r/o nodes. The same thing is applicable to the r/o nodes.

Whatever the reason this is not currently possible may have its own logic and it was done for purpose. But the problem is that in some cases it will not be quite possible to make every single decision automatically, depending on a number of conditions. For example, if you made a mistake and modified or removed some file. In that case, with current automatic logic, the file becomes non-propagatable. But this is not necessarily what you would like to happen. Or, after a while, you decided to exclude some other files from propagation, at least from now on.

So, it is basically logically impossible to create an automatic logic to accommodate all possible conditions. No matter what you do with logic, you will pretty much inevitably come to some contradiction and/or uncertainty that can not be resolved automatically without user intervention.

Therefore, there is a compelling need to individually adjust the behavior of any file or entire subfolder not automatically, with preset logic, but manually.

This could be done by displaying an explorer kind of popup box where you could click on some folder and expand it and then right click on some file in order to modify a number of things. There is a need for an easy way to see which files are a part of the distributable share by displaying a checkbox next to them indicating that they indeed are. You might have several checkboxes indicating different things.

When one right clicks on a file, he should see a popup box, like properties, where you have a number of choices, such as restore the original propagation status of this file, include/exclude it from propagating, resync file contents from the master right now, and so on.

Or, alternatively, you could have a stand-alone executable to access the database and make these adjustments if this is undesirable to do it directly from btsync GUI. You might want to automatically suspend the operations of the main btsync while you are modifying things and then restart it agian when you exit the dialog box by clicking OK button.

You would probably need to authenticate the user before you allow to make any changes to the database.

On the Linux end, you might simply have a separate executable to modify the database with command line interface. Even that would be sufficient for vast majority of cases. One of the options to the command line is operation (mark non propagatable, resync, restore from master, etc.) followed by the file name argument. In this case, shell will do standard file name expansion for you.

One other thing you might want to provide is the command to display all the files that will NOT propagate. One more would be to output the list of all files that had the propagation errors and the exact reason for those errors, fully expanded in a user readable manner instead of displaying some meaningless hash strings (those could be printed in parens at the end of the message).

This would be great. Because the way it is right now, it is a major hassle in our case and it takes way too much time and creates way too many problems. We would not like to write the shell scripts to tell btsync not to sync some files by cheating it and deleting the file and then run another script to restore those files assuming that from now on they will not propagate.

[Native Advertisement]

Another vote for selective syncing. I think the dropbox client's interface works well for this.

[GreatMarko]

For completeness, the following users also previously requested such features in the original Wishlist thread:

 

- selective sync: don't download everything, only some folders. Pretty much how you select files in a torrent.

2) Very need to got ability to download not all the files. Only wanted.

9) Selective Syncing: When someone shares a big folder with a lot of files to me, I would like to be able to mark check boxes to the files and folders I want to sync and keep updated when they change.

For all secrets

-selective sync

2. Selective sync. I don't always want to sync every (sub)folder...especially not on my mobile!

3) Selective Sync for desktop clients. Specifically - clients should be able to browse the full file list available from all remote shares and then selectively download what is required without doing a full sync.

3) Selective Sync for desktop clients. Specifically - clients should be able to browse the full file list available from all remote shares and then selectively download what is required without doing a full sync.

PLEASE This!!

It would make BT Sync the holy grail of personal file transfer.

Give me a reason to abandon crusty old FTP :-P

1) Selective Sync for desktop clients.

selective-sync gui... I know I could use .SyncIgnore

Continued...

[GreatMarko]

...continued

For completeness, the following users also previously requested such features in the original Wishlist thread:

Put me down for:

selective syncing

3. Selective sync at Folder and File level, if it's not checked ignore it, get rid of .SyncIgnore.

3. Download-only file access. This is more for personal use. I'd like to have a BTSync folder that stores all of my movies, archives, and other data that I only access infrequently. When I want to download one of them, I want to be able to pick the file instead of syncing the whole folder, and likewise for uploading. This would be a huge advantage, and based on how BTSync works I don't think it would be that difficult to do.

[sparda79]

Yes to selective sync.

Something like:

 

Files and folders with matching patterns are excluded from sync.

*.bak

*.thumbnails

/backup/*.*

[usblinux]

+1 for Selective Sync

[Mogidin]

+1. great feature

[jaithn]

+1. I would like to have it like the functionality of the iphone app. i can browse through all files and can choose which ones to download and/or sync!

thanks

[acDCuk]

+1 for a Selective Sync feature, similar to how uTorrent client lets you select which files you want get from the host.

 

Magnet links + uTorrent have shown this kind of behavior is possible, but to have it included in BT Sync would make BT sync even better

[theone]

+1

 

I would like to be able to include/exlude certain files/forlder within a sync folder for syncing

[jimbofarns]

+1 ! Selective sync must be coming soon?? 

 

We use BitTorrect Sync for a small/medium business and let me share my problem:

 

Sync 1: Technical

         Folder 1 - Not needed by me

         Folder 2 - Needed by Me

         Folder 3 - Not needed by me

Sync 2: Managers

         Folder 1 - Not needed by me

         Folder 2 - Not needed by me

         Folder 3 - Needed by me

 

So personally I end up with loads of data on my machine that I do not require.

 

Selective sync would let me remove folder 1 and 3 from "Technical" and remove folder 1 and 2 from "Managers" that I do not require.

 

J

[graphicsmagick]

I want to see selective download for Desktop and Mobile clients (similar to how Dropbox for iOS works)

 

For recursive selective sync? Meh. I'm happy to delete existing shares and re-organize the folders.