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Blocklist: Don't show certain directories/folders

Open tnyeanderson opened this issue 6 years ago • 21 comments

There should be an option to blacklist directories/files (using wildcard notation) from appearing in the "Recents" list at the top of the Files page.

Use case: I have .txt files used with nextcloud notes. I don't want these files to appear in my "recents" list as they are edited often, and edited through the nextcloud/notes app. Because of this, all I see in the recents list are my notes, which then open in text editors rather than the nextcloud/notes app. For this I would add a wildcard for Notes/* (or similar).

I think this is, in addition to not having hidden files a la #71, Will make the experience much better.

tnyeanderson avatar May 17 '19 14:05 tnyeanderson

Yes, thats really much needed!

szaimen avatar Sep 07 '19 22:09 szaimen

Have the same need. My use case: I have one folder which holds all auto uploaded images of my family. Already excluded it from the gallery (.nomedia).

I think it would be useful to reuse this concept here. For example .noindex seems suited:

Nextant leaves the user the possibility of not indexing the contents of a directory (recursively) by the creation of a .noindex file.

https://nextcloud.com/blog/nextcloud-11-introduces-full-text-search/

jonas-app avatar Dec 30 '19 20:12 jonas-app

I think it would be useful to reuse this concept here.

Makes sense for power users. But not very usable for the average user. And technically, we have to traverse the files every time we want to build the list of recommendations because that file might exist in one of the parent directories. Right now we don't even have to go into the storage to get the information. Storage access will most likely make this feature slow with external storage.

ChristophWurst avatar Jan 07 '20 09:01 ChristophWurst

Came here to open a feature request for this exact feature. I'd settle for just being able to blacklist directories. All it takes is one directory with a lot of writes to render Recommendations useless with noise.

Torqu3Wr3nch avatar Nov 08 '20 03:11 Torqu3Wr3nch

Seconding this as well. I use the auto-upload feature of Nextcloud and all my photo uploads dominated the entire Recommended / Most Recent list.

Now I'm using Joplin which works well with Nextcloud. But every note edit modifies a file within Nextcloud directory /Joplin, so my Recommended / Most Recent files are just an endless list of hashed .md files.

Carnet has this problem too. However, I noticed they use /.carnet which at least hides the directory from the normal Files view.

zzyzx-dc avatar Jan 04 '21 18:01 zzyzx-dc

I think the "flag" to exclude a folder from Recents should be a hidden file or WebDAV attribute, such that applications which use Nextcloud as storage (like Swift Backup or Seedvault) could automatically set the flag without the user's intervention.

Thesola10 avatar Dec 05 '21 17:12 Thesola10

The bookmarks app is now creating backups and the recommended files is flooded with YYYY-MM-DD.html files. Either a mechanism of blacklisting directories, or the ability to select which directories are to be looked at for entries for the recommended list would be a good enhancement.

indyspike avatar Apr 07 '22 08:04 indyspike

Perhaps it should follow the .noindex or .nomedia files?

This will also allow you to easy filter away backups, and means that 1 "setting" works consistent accross many apps.

gmeks avatar Jun 15 '22 11:06 gmeks

I definitely prefer the flexibility of a separate option. I might want to make sure a folder is indexed, but not showed in recents. Or show up in my photos app but not in recents.

.norecents ?

tnyeanderson avatar Jun 15 '22 15:06 tnyeanderson

+1 Joplin syncs to my nextcloud and dashboard recommended files is now useless.

j0hnnyclaymore avatar Feb 03 '23 23:02 j0hnnyclaymore

+1 Joplin syncs to my nextcloud and dashboard recommended files is now useless.

+1 That's exactly when I disabled the recommended files card.

xinstein avatar Jul 20 '23 02:07 xinstein

I think [.nomedia] would be useful to reuse this concept here.

Makes sense for power users. But not very usable for the average user. And technically, we have to traverse the files every time we want to build the list of recommendations because that file might exist in one of the parent directories. Right now we don't even have to go into the storage to get the information. Storage access will most likely make this feature slow with external storage.

The .nomedia (and .noimage, etc.) is something that many mobile users (at least Android and Blackberry) are already accustomed to.

The Photos app now respects the .noimage standard GitHub issues 75, 159, and 234. So this is a pattern that already ships with Nextcloud. This is an additional argument that the convention is not too difficult for the average user.

As for the performance impact, I understand the concern there. Perhaps there could be a flag to ignore certain files and have it disabled by default? This would give the performance by default, and still give the option of being consistent with the .nomedia standard. Would this provide an acceptable path forward, @ChristophWurst?

Also, allowing the user to specify what flags should be considered (e.g. .noimage, .nomedia, .norecents) would be helpful. Some users are going to want granular control over as @tnyeanderson (and the people who gave it a :+1:) have pointed out, while others will want the files they're trying to hide to be hidden everywhere, not just in the Photos app and on their mobile devices.

And for the people who come across this thread looking for any solution at all to stop this from showing up, there are two workarounds:

  1. In the bottom left of the Files app -> File setting -> uncheck Show recommendations
  2. Add some custom CSS which may break 3rd party apps or be broken in future versions of Nextcloud

The first one will get rid of the bar of recent files between the home/add file section and the list of files and folders. This is likely sufficient for many people, as it stops filenames from cluttering up the screen, or potentially being seen by someone who can see your screen.

The second one will remove the Recent entry from the navigation on the left. The workaround is about 3 years old now, so it might not work in the current version of Nextcloud.

These workarounds just throw out the Recent/Recommendations features instead of making it more useful, but hopefully we can find a path forward on this ticket to get everyone what they're looking for.

anon8675309 avatar Jul 21 '23 15:07 anon8675309

If .nomedia works well for photos we can add it here as well, I guess. I'm by no means an expert with file operations and can't judge the performance concerns.

A setting for .nomedia, .noimage, .norecents etc seems a bit too much. Nextcloud design tries to find good defaults and limit the number of settings a user needs.

ChristophWurst avatar Aug 11 '23 12:08 ChristophWurst

Nextcloud design tries to find good defaults and limit the number of settings a user needs.

I think the point of ".norecents" should be that the application automatically adds it. For example, the Notes app in the Notes folder or Bookmark apps in the backup folder. Also, what if the user has a folder inside a folder with photos that he doesn't want be scanned for but wants them to show up in recents?

mufeedali avatar Aug 23 '23 05:08 mufeedali

up

kds69 avatar Oct 09 '23 19:10 kds69

Agree, need this functionality too. Would see it as a setting where you can choose directories, and the app adds .norecents, or does the necessary plumbing. Don’t is user friendly and encourages users to use Recommended Files

Ngineer4life avatar Mar 05 '24 16:03 Ngineer4life

Bump

henrysheehy avatar May 27 '24 14:05 henrysheehy

Like many others, I believe this needs to be implemented. I'll throw my hand in to say .norecents is the better option.

ihatemyisp avatar Jul 02 '24 01:07 ihatemyisp

Exactly the same situation. Syncing Joplin with nextcloud. Only md files are in the recent list.

pretubedongit avatar Jul 16 '24 07:07 pretubedongit

dot files appear to be the Defacto way to exclude folders from nextcloud apps - here's another vote for '.norecents' | having the app manage this is a great idea, but IMO not required as many other apps requite the user to manually create the files

My recent files shows the same list of external_files (movies in my case) and never changes. I'll disable the app for now which seems to be the resolution on the internet, but i'd love to have insights into my interesting files!

k1n6b0b avatar Oct 09 '24 21:10 k1n6b0b

Even just hiding hidden files from recents would be a great start. Seedvault via grapheneos uses .SeedVaultAndroidBackup and it fills the recommended files for me

jm355 avatar Jan 25 '25 17:01 jm355