App Pro feature · Coming soon
Progress sync
Watch part of a video on one device, open it on another, and it continues where you left off, with the same audio track, subtitles and delays. PDF and text files continue at the same reading position. Progress is kept in cloud storage you choose, never on CloudDrive's servers.
Coming soon
In the next release
Progress sync arrives in the next release of the apps for iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple TV, Apple Vision Pro, Android phones and TVs, Meta Quest and Windows. The core service's web interface does not have it.
It is an App Pro feature and is off by default.
Contents
What is synced
Videos
- The playback position, and whether you watched to the end
- The audio track and subtitle track you chose
- Subtitle files you picked by hand
- Audio delay and subtitle delay
- Rotation, flip and aspect ratio
- The Blu-ray playlist and chapter, and the DVD title
Documents
- PDF: the page and the place on the page
- Text files: the reading position. It finds the same text even though each device lays the file out differently
Not synced
- Settings that depend on the screen: display mode (Fit, Pan & Scan, Stretch), zoom, the video track and Dolby Vision choice, HDR subtitle brightness, and the player engine.
- Emby and Jellyfin videos: their media server keeps the position.
- Files only one device can reach: local folders, USB drives, files in phone storage.
- App-wide settings: subtitle style, preferred languages, and the readers' view settings.
Turning it on
On the first device
-
Turn on the switch
In Settings, turn on Sync progress. It sits next to the account's Sync With Cloud.
-
Choose where to keep progress
Pick a cloud account. CloudDrive2 creates a
CloudDrive2 Syncfolder at its top level. Every device you want to sync needs access to this cloud. -
This device's history is uploaded
The playback and reading positions already on this device become the first records. The status then reads "Synced just now".
The list shows only clouds that can be written to and that other devices can reach. Local folders, USB drives, read-only clouds, archive folders and GuangYaPan are not shown. Clouds that are on all your devices through Sync With Cloud come first, and among them those without a recycle bin; see differences between clouds.
Joining
Other devices join
Other devices find the CloudDrive2 Sync folder by themselves: a card appears at the top of Settings, for example "Your other devices keep progress in 115 › CloudDrive2 Sync (3 devices). Sync this device too?" Choose Turn On; Not now hides it for 30 days.
Turning it on merges the folder's records with this device's own. A TV set up from a phone shows the same card once it has signed in and its cloud accounts have synced.
The Sync progress page
- Storage: for example "115 › CloudDrive2 Sync", changed with Change Storage….
- What syncs: videos and documents, each of which can be turned off.
- Status: for example "Synced 2 minutes ago", with Sync Now.
- Devices: each device's name, kind and last sync. You can rename this device and remove other devices' records; a device still in use reappears after its next upload, so to stop a device, turn sync off on it.
- Clear Progress on All Devices: clears positions and watched marks everywhere, and can't be undone.
- Turning sync off: progress stays on this device, and you can also delete this device's file from the cloud.
Timing
When it syncs
Uploads
Video progress uploads in three cases: you close the player, a playlist moves to the next file, or the app goes to the background. Nothing is uploaded while a video is playing or paused. Readers upload when they close.
So to continue on another device, first close the player on this one, or switch away from the app. If you only pause, the other device sees the position from the last upload.
Reads
When the app starts or comes to the front, and when a video or document is opened — waiting at most 1.5 seconds, then opening with what it has.
If newer progress from another device arrives after playback has started, the player shows a notice such as "Living Room TV stopped at 1:10:22", with Jump. A playing video is never moved by itself.
Privacy
Progress stays in your own cloud
CloudDrive's servers never receive this data. What you watched, and on which device, is known only to you and to whoever can open that cloud.
What the folder holds
Inside CloudDrive2 Sync there is a folder per CloudDrive account, a JSON file per device, and a README.txt explaining the folder. Each device writes only its own file and reads the others'.
Every file holds everything its device has merged, so deleting one device's file loses no progress.
The files are not encrypted
They are plain JSON text listing the paths of the files you opened and where you stopped. Anyone who can open that cloud — people you share the account with, and the cloud provider — can read them. Choose a cloud you are comfortable keeping that in.
Deleting the CloudDrive2 Sync folder deletes the copy in the cloud; devices that still have sync on write their own files again.
Clouds
Differences between clouds
Each upload replaces the device's previous file with a new one. On a cloud with a recycle bin, the replaced file goes to the bin.
| Cloud | After each upload |
|---|---|
| 115, 123, Baidu, Tianyi (189), OneDrive | The old file goes to the recycle bin until the provider empties it |
| Aliyun Drive (open platform), Xunlei, Google Drive | The old file is deleted permanently, not kept in a bin |
| WebDAV, S3, SMB, SFTP, FTP | No recycle bin |
| GuangYaPan | Can't hold the progress folder |
Uploads are few: even a heavy day of watching makes about 20, far under each provider's request limits. When a provider limits requests, sync waits 15 minutes to an hour before trying again. When a cloud's sign-in expires, sync pauses until you sign in to that cloud again.
FAQ
Frequently asked questions
The other device didn't start where I stopped
Pausing doesn't upload. Close the player on the first device, or switch away from the app, then open the video on the other one. If the other device is already playing, it shows a Jump notice within a minute or so once it reads the new position.
This device can't find the other devices' progress
This device doesn't have the cloud account that holds the progress. Add that cloud, or turn on the account's Sync With Cloud so your cloud accounts reach this device.
What happens when App Pro ends?
Sync pauses on every device, and nothing in the cloud is deleted. Each device keeps saving its own resume positions as before. When App Pro comes back, sync resumes and the progress saved in the meantime is merged by time, so nothing is lost.
Is progress kept when a file is renamed or moved?
Yes. Sync finds the same file by its contents, name and size, and moves the progress to the new path.
I don't want one device to save playback positions
Turn off Remember Playback Position in that device's player settings. It then neither saves nor restores video positions, and adds nothing to sync.
Report a problem
File problems as GitHub issues, where they are recorded and tracked; you can also report them in the Telegram group or by email.