SeaDrive macOS has no way to keep files reliably offline

Feature Request
1

I’m a 9-user Seafile Pro customer, mostly on macOS. SeaDrive does what we need except for one thing: there’s no way to pin a file or folder so it stays local.

On Windows you can right-click and “Always keep on this device”. On macOS, the only options are “Download Now” (one-shot, evictable) and “Remove Download.” Whatever I cache right now can be just disappear later whenever the cleaner runs. This makes SeaDrive unsuitable for offline use.

The workarounds are: oversize the cache and hope, or run the regular Seafile sync client alongside SeaDrive. Both defeat the point of even using SeaDrive.

This has been requested multiple times on this forum since 2020 with no real response:

  • Make available offline (Jan 2020)
  • SeaDrive Mac: Keep Offline (Dec 2022)
  • Pin folders on macOS (May 2024)

On the exact same version (3.0.21), Windows users get pinning while Mac users don’t. Every comparable client has it: iCloud, OneDrive, Dropbox, Google Drive, Box. The macOS File Provider API supports it natively.

Six years of silence on a feature parity gap isn’t acceptable. Can someone from the team actually engage with whether this is on the roadmap, and if not, why not?

2

I was noticing mac wasnt keeping my files reliably, I definitelly second this featore, I moved from other cloud software to seafile for control and reliability and I host 2 users in 4 computers, 2 pcs and 2 macs, and this is really a fewature that has been getting on my way.

3

This feature has been added since 3.0.23 version of SeaDrive for macOS.

4

regardless of what seafile version im on? im on 12 and after all ive read about upgrading to 13 im pretty scared.

5

i have folders that are eternally in “syncing” , while seadrive says its all done an up to date, this happens both windows and macos, and i do not know how to fix it.

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6

No — this depends on SeaDrive for macOS, not the Seafile server version. The macOS pinning/offline support was added in SeaDrive 3.0.23, and the macOS manual recommends SeaDrive 3.0 for macOS 12.1+.

So if you’re on Seafile 12, that doesn’t block the feature by itself; the key requirement is the SeaDrive client version. If you’re currently on an older SeaDrive for macOS, upgrading the client is what enables the “Always keep downloaded” behavior.