Wusel 0.5.0: small, quiet, and on-demand

Christoph D. Hermann & Claude nextcloudlinuxrust

Wusel is a Nextcloud filesystem for Linux, written in Rust. Your files show up in the file manager, but they stay in the cloud until you open them. Nothing is copied to your disk until you need it. Version 0.5.0 is out, and it is faster, keeps your files more up to date, and is easier to install. Here is what changed.

Faster connections (HTTP/2)

A file manager sends many small requests at once. Where the server supports it, Wusel now sends them over one shared connection instead of many separate ones. Browsing feels smoother.

Files stay more up to date

  • If your server cannot send instant updates, Wusel now checks for changes on its own every few minutes (5 by default; you can turn this off).
  • When the live connection comes back after a drop, Wusel checks once for everything you missed.
  • Folders that did not change are skipped, so the check is quicker.

A separate package for GNOME Files

The GNOME Files add-ons (the icons and the right-click menu) are now a separate package called wusel-nautilus. This keeps plain wusel small: it needs only fuse3 and no GTK, which is what you want on a server or a non-GNOME desktop. In the right-click menu, the Wusel entries are now grouped under one "Wusel" menu: keep a folder offline, "Open in Nextcloud", and "Copy Internal Link".

Small but handy

  • A new command, wusel web url PATH, prints the Nextcloud web link for a file or folder.
  • The executable flag (chmod +x) is now kept. It stays after renames, saves, and new versions from the server.

Fewer wrong "conflict" copies

Sometimes Wusel made a wrong "conflicted copy" of a file you had just uploaded — for example when the upload's reply got lost, or when you renamed or deleted the file right away. This is fixed. Renames and deletes now wait for the upload to finish, and the text merge again starts from the version your edit was based on.

macOS (still experimental)

The Mac version (Finder integration) got better: Finder now shows "Update Now" and the Nextcloud web actions, and only the actions that make sense for what you selected. macOS is still experimental. There is no ready-made build yet — to try it, you build it yourself.

Small footprint

Wusel installs as a single package of about 5 MB and needs only fuse3. On disk it is roughly 15 MB.

The official Nextcloud desktop client is a different kind of program. It ships either as a 64 MB AppImage, or as a distribution package that pulls in the full Qt 6 stack — including Qt's Chromium-based web engine — which is tens to hundreds of megabytes on disk. That is a fair trade for a full graphical app, but it is a lot to carry if all you want is your files in the file manager.

Wusel also stays out of the way. It runs as a background service. There is no tray icon and no window; you just use your files.

Where the official client stands

Nextcloud is bringing on-demand ("virtual") files to Linux too, and that is good for everyone. The tracking issue is closed. To be precise about the current state: the feature is merged for the desktop client version 35, which is not released yet — the current desktop release is 34.0.4, without it — and Nextcloud labels the feature as beta ("recommended only with proper backups"). So it is coming, as an opt-in beta. Wusel is here today and has been stable in daily use for months.

How to install or update

Wusel ships as a signed package repository for Fedora, openSUSE Tumbleweed, Debian 13, and Ubuntu 26.04 (both x86_64 and ARM64). You add the repository once; after that, Wusel updates with your normal system update. The steps for each distribution are in the install guide.

If you already added the repository and have Wusel installed, a normal system update gives you 0.5.0.

One note for Debian and Ubuntu: the GNOME part is now the separate wusel-nautilus package. Once the repository is set up, install it one time:

sudo apt install wusel-nautilus

This works only after the Wusel repository is added — see the install guide above. On Fedora and openSUSE, the package manager pulls it in automatically if you use GNOME Files.