What about iCloud sync?

Hello, I'm new here, looking for note taking alternatives. I see that Joplin syncs via several way but not iCloud, and no comments were found before about this in this forum. I can imagine the reason, but I want to open a new feature discussion if you like :slight_smile:

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I know this post is extremely old but if anyone comes across it, apparently iCloud supports webDav too: Icloud WebDav

I am not at home to test this, but I wonder if this will support multiplatform uploads? If so, this might be extremely useful for those of you that are mostly part of the Apple ecosystem or want to sync your iPhone with your Windows or Linux PC if you prefer iCloud for your storage needs

Just to let everyone know this information for icloud webdav at the link provided does not work. I have spent a couple hours searching on google for any viable settings for icloud and nothing seems to work. I also downloaded a client and tried a few combinations of server name and creds mostly using icloud.com as the base url. but no joy.

I would love any help with this. icloud space is super cheap and I have the 99 cents 50gb package but cannot use it for my joplin sync. i am stuck using my free dropbox plan. Thanks! john

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@elusive, thanks for checking into that. One of the core issues with iCloud (and it’s one of being in opposition to the core design philosophy of Joplin) is that it is limited to only Apple platforms. There’s almost no real way that I know of to access iCloud content directly on Windows or Linux. Apple also doesn’t allow direct access to their iOS file system, making using File System Sync not exactly a viable option either.

If you are interested in using iCloud for your notes and are exclusively locked to the Apple Ecosystem, you might be better off moving to a note-taking app such as Bear. Other than that, the devs here would be much better suited to explaining this more.

Apple once again tries to lock people in with their ecosystem. Unfortunately there’s nothing we can do.

You as a customer can complain to Apple that WebDAV access does not work. But as with all complaints to Apple, this will go straight to /dev/null.

With Apple there are only 2 choices:

  • live with their mess and restrictions
  • switch to something else

In fact, it’s only once choice, if you want to use Apple. And that’s exactly what they want.

I’m using macOS myself, but I don’t use any of their cloud products or services. I don’t have a dev account, because they require 2FA for it and Apple’s 2FA does only work with iCloud. (The text-to-phone workaround is unusable when you are travelling with other SIM cards and Apple is too ignorant to allow TOTP as an alternative.)

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Yes I don’t see iCloud support ever happen unfortunately. We don’t even have support for Google Drive, which would be a lot easier to implement and would work on all platforms.

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In addition, Windows users can still use iCloud Drive. :grin:

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Hey there,
I am using pCloud as an alternative to iCloud, Dropbox etc. Would it be possible to implement the option to select a certain folder in pCloud (say, “.Joplin”) as the synchronization target?
I guess there are many alternatives to DropBox out there, some of which will work well on Apple devices. Implementing at least one of these would help to get started. I suggest to give pCloud a chance.
Thanks!

I use pCloud and access it using WebDAV. You just need to add the append the folder name to the WebDAV address and you are good to go.

@dpoulton had a good comment about this the other day.

Thanks for the quick reply.
Sorry if I am slow here – so, in Joplin on the iPad, in Configuration -> Synchronization, I choose as Sychronization target “WebDAV”. Then I put in the WebDAV URL the string: “https://webdav.pcloud.com/Joplin” (“Joplin” being the name of the pCloud folder I am synchronizing my Joplin folder with on my other devices), and I fill in my pCloud-username (email) and my pCloud password, correct?
I did just this and checked the connection, getting a long error message back: “PROPFIND: unknown error 2 (401)…”
“This server could not verify that you are authorized to access the document requested…” (wrong username or password, which I checked) "…or your browser does not understand how to supply the credentials required.’ – the message comes from Apache @ Debian at webdav.pcloud.com Port 433, so the URL seems to be working in principle.
So I am stuck here. Any advice?
Perhaps I should open another thread?

I would love to hear more about using pCloud for doing the sync. I’ve never gotten it to work and have only seen posts here about others not getting it to work either.

i’ve got 3 windows10 devices and 2 android devices all syncing to https://webdav.pcloud.com/Joplin without issues so i’m not sure i can help much. what kind of problems are you seeing? if your on nix instead of windows, can’t help you much there, sorry.

Thanks. I run Linux, but most of the reasons I’ve read for the sync not working point to pClouds implementation of webdav and not to the OS or Joplin. I just need to find a way to try a pCloud sync without losing my current data.

You could start a new instance, new location. Then try setting up pcloud that way? Ive done that before with the portable version of joplin.

I have had success after contacting the pCloud help people support@pcloud.com . They told me that, as my account was counted as European, the webdav URL is https://ewebdav.pcloud.com (port 443). Using this URL worked fine for me, Joplin synchronized to my iPad.
Possibly that is a solution for others in (or associated with) Europe as well. And possibly there are other WebDAV-URLs for Joplin depending of your region. I find it strange that they do not publish any information on WebDAV anywhere.

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To access Dropbox or OneDrive on Windows (and any other platform) you need to install their app. To access iCloud Drive on Windows you need to install Apple app. So for Windows number of steps will be the same. But for Mac and other Apple platforms there will be no need to install 3rd company app just to enable sync platform. Adding possibility to use iCloud Drive in iOS app will allow to sync data as on Mac we can use filesystem sync and locate sync folder in iCloud Drive.

I haven't tried WebDAV, but why wouldn't it be possible to sync Joplin via the local file system? I have this option in MacOS. On iOS, I would expect a similar option that gives access to the same areas as the "Files" app. For example, I have a folder in my MacOS home area for vimwiki and can easily access with Textastic on my iOS devices. Is there a technical issue with accessing this way and allowing iCloud to sync the folders? (possible issues with lock files?)

Mark

I'm in the process of testing Joplin for my personal use, and a cloud sync matters to me.

I have found a very easy way to sync Joplin to my iCloud Drive on a desktop Mac (the iPhone is more challenging!).

First, on the your Mac, go to your local drive folder where you sync your Joplin notes and notebooks. Move up 1 level.
Now, create an alias of that folder.
Next, drag the entire Joplin sync target folder from your local drive on to your iCloud Drive. Do NOT include the alias you just made. Leave that where it is.
In your Joplin desktop preferences, select Local files, then navigate to the alias file. Select that. As far as I can determine, the path that is created in the prefs references a location in your home directory (~/Library/) called 'Mobile Documents' that points to that alias.
Now, when you sync, all your notes and notebooks wind up on your iCloud Drive. This has worked flawlessly for me for a month or so.
I think it might be doable with the iPhone version, but at this point I am still working on that.

Related: Apple CloudKitJS . It's unclear whether anyone wanting to work on this needs a paid Apple Developer account.