Sometime back the development of a virtual file system (VFS) for the Nextcloud client was announced, with initial focus on the Windows platform (maybe to compete with MS OneDrive). Meanwhile there is basic support for Linux available, although the integrations is not as smooth and nice looking as on Windows. The feature is still in "experimental" state, but may some are interested to give it a try.
With nextcloud-client version 3.3.4 package build #26 the support of virtual fily system (VFS) is also available on Solus (previous version had some issue with wrong VFS plugin location).
To enable VFS in the Nextcloud desktop client, first edit the user configuration file ~/.config/Nextcloud/nextcloud.cfg and add showExperimentalOptions=true in the [General] section. Restart the desktop client to apply the change.
The second step for using VFS is to enable it for a cloud synchronisation. Open the Settings window of the Nextcloud desktop client. For the synchronisation which should get VFS enabled, click the ellipses [...] at the right of the synchronisation header and select "Enable virtual file support...".
For new synchronisations the VFS option can also be selected during the setup steps.
NOTE: First synchronisation may take quite long if the synchronisation contains many files because the sync client creates an empty file reference for each of remote file on the local drive.
On Linux the unsynchronised virtual files have file name suffix .nextcloud. Nautilus opens them with the Nextcloud client app, which then downloads and opens the actual file. In the right-click context menu there are Nexcloud options to see and change the current sync and VFS state.
For some more information have a look at: Nextcloud Desktop Manual > Appendix B and GitHub Issue #3668: VFS on Linux.
I'm using it now since more than a week and seems to work as expected, would be interesting to get some feedback from other about this feature.
