Offline directories not viewable in Files.app

[ghost]

Expected behaviour

When offline, the content in offline directories should be viewable in Files.app and whatever uses it

Actual behaviour

Get error “You’re offline. Check your internet connection and try again.”

The content can be viewed in the nextCloud app itself (which one should never have to use!) AND in Files.app from the Favourites side bar (if the directory is directly there—this won’t work for subdirectories of offline directories). Files at the toplevel of the offline directory can also be opened when gaining access through the sidebar.

Steps to reproduce

Go offline and try to open.

iOS version

Latest

App version

Latest (2.25.1.4).

........

I’m getting ready to give up and pay for an iCloud subscription. It’s not expensive but I have principles… Unfortunately the nextCloud iOS app, while it has never been exactly good, has become more unreliable than iCloud which is saying mountains considering that Steve Jobs must be rolling in his grave at light speed given the way-worse-than-Windows95 quality of Apple software these days. Even though iCloud does not support offline files, it’s more likely to actually have the file downloaded than the nextCloud app is to give me access to the file (that is downloaded—I make periodically sure of that as auto-refresh has never worked).

[cwmke]

My wife discovered the same issue before a flight. Her desired workflow is as follows,

1. Open Nextcloud in the files app.
2. Go to the desired directory(s) and set several files as available offline.
3. Return to the same folder later without internet access.
4. Open and edit (with markup) offline files.
5. Edited documents are synced when internet access resumes.

Not sure if this is by design (Apple) or something that needs to be adjusted by Nextcloud but enabling this functionality will help business users a lot.

[ghost]

Due to the extreme unreliability of nextcloud/iOS, I've since switched to ResilioSync which has no offline use problems (and is encrypted via files.app—something that nextcloud/iOS also refuses to implement citing iOS supposedly disallowing it). Problems that may stem from iOS being crap is Unicode not working when saving files outside iCloud, and search rarely working.

[aveng3rr]

I’ve been struggling with this same issue for a while. Offline files in Nextcloud used to be (a while ago) accessible via the Files app in iOS. I experience this issue on my iPad and iPhone (iPadOS 14.6 & iOS 14.6). Nextcloud app version 4.0.4. Nextcloud server version 21.0.1. This issue should have been fixed a long time ago.

[aveng3rr]

I performed some additional testing with accessing Nextcloud offline files using the Files app. My initial thought was that it wasn’t working due to the loading message that would appear for a very long time. The offline files will appear in the Files app after a 2 minute delay when the Nextcloud server is unavailable. The same 2 minute loading delay is experienced every time a user navigates to a different offline folder using the Files app. The 2 minute delay is unbearable. The timeout period needs to be shortened.

[DanielKraemer]

I would also need this feature to listen to some audio books, music or view some videos without mobile data. But I cannot access them as they aren't visible within the files section...

[adam4235]

I seem to be able to view the files when I disconnect Wifi. I have version 4.8.0.5 of the app on iOS 16.4.1(a), running version 25.0.6 of the server. I don't have a cell phone data plan. I'm still unable to edit the files when offline, so the very reasonable workflow described above by @cwmke still doesn't seem possible. I don't have any kind of text editor installed, and iOS doesn't include one (I don't know of an open source one and was hoping Nextcloud could solve that problem).