SeaDrive Client 1.0.5 – No preview / Quicklook Mac?

Hey there,
I updated to 1.0.5. but noticed that Quicklook and the preview of files is no longer working (tested it for image and pdf files).

In the changelog (https://manual.seafile.com/changelog/drive-client-changelog.html), I found this:
“[Mac] Add Mac Finder preview plugin to prevent automatically downloading of files”

What does that mean? Do I need to activate this again? If so, how?

Thanks!
florian

Hello Florian,

On Mojave 10.14.5 with Seafile CE 7.0.2 server it does work.

I also have FUSE system extension installed. FUSE is essential.

I did notice one thing that might affect you especially when viewing large files. If the file has not been cached yet (still has orange icon/tag) the first view using Quick Look will fail and will only display an icon. Release Quick Look, wait a second for the file to cache, try again and you will see the Quick Look preview of the file (Finder icon/tag will turn to green).

Thank you for your quick reply. I see what you mean and it does work that way for files. I had other cases, where it wouldn’t load the quick look at all.

To be honest it felt snappier before. Could we implement this as an option not a must?

Thanks!
Florian

Not sure what you mean. Can you clarify? -Thanks

Before the update Quick Look and Previews were instant in Finder. Now Finder won’t download quick (?) enough to show Quick Look or Preview. Before I never had the problem that the preview won’t load. Now I have it.

According to the changelog, something was changed regarding preview downloads ("“[Mac] Add Mac Finder preview plugin to prevent automatically downloading of files”). Question is, wether I could activate that automatically downloading of files again. I’m connected via LAN to the server, so Internetspeed is not the issue.

Or maybe someone could elaborate what this notice in the change log means.

Thanks!
florian

Under Settings > Advanced tab there are settings for Cache cleaning and size. What are yours set to? Have you changed them or have they reset?

Are you thinking that you would like to revert to an older version of Drive Client?

I have set it up for 1 Minute and 9gb in total size (which does not make any sense at all ;D). Any recommendations?

I had a better experience with the old version, so yes, I’ll think about it and advise my colleagues to wait with the update.

cheers
florian

My settings are 10/10 but I’m not concerned about large files particularly. I’m thinking you should push your cache size higher though.

What was the last version of Drive Client that worked the way you liked?

Thanks for the input. I had that version before: 1.0.4.

@daniel.pan I agree with Florian. I would also like to have a little more info on this plugin. Could you elaborate on this plugin?

  • What the kind of problem this plugin seeks to fix?
  • How does it do it?
  • Are there any requirements?
  • Is there a way to disable it (if the functionality is not desired as in Florian’s case)?
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It looks like almost all the previous versions are still available for download:

https://download.seadrive.org/seadrive-1.0.5.dmg

https://download.seadrive.org/seadrive-1.0.4.dmg

https://download.seadrive.org/seadrive-1.0.3.dmg

https://download.seadrive.org/seadrive-1.0.1.dmg

https://download.seadrive.org/seadrive-1.0.0.dmg

Hey Florian,

There is another note on the mysterious plugin in this post that seems related to your issue.

The Roadmap suggests an update to Drive Client for Mac in 2019/09 (Seafile 7.1).

I hope we can get some clarification from Development. Maybe @daniel.pan can offer a word or two?

When a user open a folder in SeaDrive, the Finder will automatically download files to generate previews. This plugin is to prevent this behaviour. It can not be deactivated currently.

For the no preview problem for images, it is a bug. We will fix it soon. For the slow preview problem, this is because we use a single thread to fetch thumbnail from server currently.

For PDFs, currently this is no preview yet. But we will add the ability to generate PDS thumbnail in the server in version 7.1. Then the client can use fetch the thumbnail from the server.

1 Like

Thank you for the clarification. I’ll check if I downgrade to 1.0.4. or wait for the bug, thank you.

I downgrade. It’s not suitable for me at this moment, as I’m relying quite heavy on the previews…

@daniel.pan Any news on this issue? I just tried 1.0.8, but no previews are loaded. Even after the file has been downloaded…

thanks!

To let it perform well the server also has to precompute the thumbnails. Otherwise accessing a folder with 1000 images is going to create huge IO and CPU load with just a single user.

It works on my Mac OS 10.13. Which Mac OS version do you use?

Thanks for asking about the version. I just tried it on Catalina and it works. I will observe this… It’s not working on an older machine running Mojave, but I will update the machine to see if something changes.
Thanks!

FYI – on this end Im able to preview .PDF files from seadrive no problem, which is quite important for me as well.

Setup as follows:

Seafile Drive Client 1.0.10
macOS Catalina 10.15.2