[Feature request]: support multiple dropbox accounts about maestral

[rctneil]

@samschott Let me give it another test tomorrow when i'm back on that machine.

Will the multi account stuff get added to the GUI sometime? Just to make the whole process easier for the vast majority of users?

Really appreciate your quick replies!

[samschott]

Hi @van-tienhoang, this should fundamentally be possible - its just a question of managing the settings for different accounts.

The work would mainly be in developing the UI to handle multiple accounts in a simple, non-cluttered way. I don't have the time to do this at the moment, but do of course welcome suggestions in design and pull requests.

[samschott]

The latest beta introduces experimental support for multiple Dropbox accounts. This works by creating separate configurations through the command line with maestral env new "name" and then selecting which configuration to use when running an instance of Maestral:

maestral gui --config-name="name"

Install and usage instructions are available under releases. Feel free to try it out and let me know what you think.

[samschott]

This has been released in v0.3.2 now. But it needs to be configured through the command line.

[rctneil]

@samschott I've just added a second DB account using the command line. I wish to look at the preferences of this second account using the GUI but when I try it asks me to run pip3 install maestral[gui].

When I do that I get zsh: no matches found: maestral[gui]

Any ideas?

[techman83]

Wrap it in qoutes "maestral[GUI]", zsh is funny about square brackets.

[samschott]

@rctneil, indeed square brackets have a special meaning in zsh so you'll need to wrap the expression in quotes.

That being said, if you have installed the macOS app bundle, you should not be seeing this prompt since you already have the GUI installed. This is a bug in the current release, due to some missing metadata in the app bundle. To work around it, you can launch a GUI with the new config as follows:

$ /Applications/Maestral.app/Contents/MacOS/Maestral -c CONFIG_NAME

If you do install the Python package with pip3 install "maestral[gui]", you'll have both the Python package and the app bundle installed side by side. This might be a bit confusing but won't be a problem either.

[rctneil]

Hi @samschott Thanks for that. Just tried that option but I get the following error:

Contents/Resources/app_packages/toga_cocoa/app.py:115: DeprecationWarning: There is no current event loop
[Cocoa] Not implemented: ScrollContainer.set_on_scroll()

Once this works, will both accounts have their own Maesral app icon in the menu bar?

If I open the Maestral app from my Applications folder, which will open?

Sorry, just trying to get my head around how this works with multiple accounts!

Thanks in advance!

[samschott]

Those warning is absolutely fine and don't affect functionality. To answer your questions:

Once this works, will both accounts have their own Maesral app icon in the menu bar?

Yes, every account will have its separate GUI, including menu bar icon. I have never gotten around to writing a single user interface that can handle multiple accounts.

If I open the Maestral app from my Applications folder, which will open?

It will open the account which you linked first, under the default config name "maestral".

Note that the "Start on login" option in the preference pane works independently for each configuration. If you check that option for each account, the next time you log in you will have two instances of Maestral running, one for each account.

If you don't like cluttering your menu bar like this, you can also start the sync-daemon only with the CLI option:

$ maestral autostart -Y -c CONFIG_NAME

You will still receive desktop notifications for any changes and can always attach a GUI to the running daemon with

$ maestral gui -c CONFIG_NAME

once this works again.

[rctneil]

@samschott Thanks for the answers. In regards to the error. When that appears, the terminal is stuck. I need to Ctrl + C to get it to exit. Also, no GUI window appears.

Sorry for not explaining fully.

[samschott]

the terminal is stuck. I need to Ctrl + C to get it to exit.

The terminal will remain "stuck" until you quit the new Maestral instance again. If you don't want it to block, you can append the character & to the command. This will sent the program to the background.

Also, no GUI window appears.

Are you sure? There should be a second menu bar icon popping up. On the newest MacBooks, it appears that this can sometimes be hidden by the notch.

[pryley]

@rctneil

1. Open Terminal
2. Link a new Dropbox: maestral gui -c [CONFIG_NAME]
3. Open the Maestral preferences and enable "Start Maestral on login"
4. Pause syncing and quit Maestral
5. launchctl start com.samschott.maestral.[CONFIG_NAME].plist

You can now quit Terminal and Maestral will continue to run.