The ownCloud Desktop client helps ownCloud users to have their data available on their computers. A lot of new features are giving you more control over your data.
The open standard OAuth2, and its secure authorization flow enhances security and makes the integration of third party apps easier. OAuth2 protects your and your users data by getting more access control. You can read more about it in our OAuth2 announcement blogpost.
Improving the look of the ownCloud client
The sharing dialog improved its looks: the desktop client now natively supports multiple public link shares, which were introduced in ownCloud X. We also included more options (e.g. to switch file listing for public folder shares) and improved the overall handling. Private and public sharing are in different tabs now. Our Goal is to streamline UX from server desktop and mobile client. ownCloud is a platform for any device you work on.
Another improvement in usability is that from now on you can copy and open the private link (previously direct links) from the context menu. This saves a lot of time and is more intuitive:
Finally there is quite a number of improvements in the overlay icons and their performance to better reflect file status. The file explorer sidebar entries for Windows & macOS are now fully branded with the ownCloud icon (although for Windows 10 it will be available from the 2.5.0 release).
When you share a file, the green overlay icon changes.
You can let others do anonymous uploads now, by sharing an empty folder to them. Just share the link to a group, and look what data you can collect. This way others don’t need an ownCloud account anymore to share their files with you.
Avatars
Where previously the Avatars just displayed a gray figure, you can now see your ownCloud profile picture in the Account Tab. Thanks to Klaas Freitag, the original developer of the desktop client, for adding this feature!
There are now more Filters in the Activity tab to avoid mixing up entries from different accounts/folders, more clear display of error and conflict messages; now linked from the account tab (to avoid excessive amounts of information in there). The entries can be sorted by name, date, etc. now so it‘s easier to track them down and solve the issue.
Improving the data flow to ownCloud, step by step
This version also comes with a huge number of small technical improvements and refactoring. The data flow and general interaction with an ownCloud server was improved in several small points. The client is now able to adapt to a wider range of redirections, so it can transparently adapt when servers switch URLs.
Additionally we made several advances to the sync behavior: the new dynamic chunking logic will result in faster uploads. You have now The capacity to upload conflict files based on a client setting or a better handling of errors and local renames, just to give a few examples.
Upgrade now!
As this is a huge improvement, you should get the new version now. If you don’t use the Desktop client yet, get it on our download page for Linux, MacOS, and Windows. If you use it already, the auto updater should bring it to you in the next days.
Thanks to all our contributors
Big thanks to everyone who contributed to this version! Open Source contributors are helping shape the platform and make ownCloud more useful everyday.
If you also want to get involved in the client development, there’s many ways to take part: you can find some “good first issues” that are a great entrypoint to the project. Want to improve the client translations for your language? Just check our projects in Transifex.
Your feedback is really important for us. If you stumble upon an issue don’t hesitate to report it on our GitHub page. For questions and comments you can either post at Central or get in touch at #owncloud-client-dev on freenode IRC.
