Installing and Configuring the Desktop Liferay Sync Client

You can download the desktop client from the Liferay customer downloads page. Note that you’ll need a Liferay account for this. Once you’ve downloaded the appropriate desktop client for your operating system, installing Liferay Sync on Windows or Mac OS is straightforward.

Installing the Liferay Sync Desktop Client

To install the Liferay Sync client on Windows, you must have administrator privileges. Upon launching the Windows application installer, you’re prompted to choose an install location. Select an appropriate location and click Install. Sync automatically starts after the installation finishes. The first time Sync runs, you must configure it to connect and sync with Liferay DXP. The configuration steps are shown below.

Note: You can upgrade previous versions of the desktop Liferay Sync client to version 3.0. When doing so, however, you must set up your account again in the new version of the client. Prior to upgrading, it’s typically best to shut down Liferay Sync, backup files from your local Sync folder, and delete that folder.

The Liferay Sync client for Mac is packaged in a DMG file. Double-clicking on the DMG file mounts it as a disk image and opens a window showing the image’s contents. To install Sync, drag the Liferay Sync icon to your Applications folder. Once it’s installed, run it from the Applications folder. If you’re running Mac OS X 10.9 or lower, you’re prompted for your machine’s administrator credentials to install the Finder icon/context menu tool. This prompt only appears when installing or upgrading the tool.

Figure 1: Drag the Liferay Sync icon to the Applications folder.

Next, you’ll configure the Sync client.

Configuring the Liferay Sync Desktop Client

Now that you’ve installed Sync, you’re ready to configure it! The configuration steps for Sync on Windows and Mac are identical.

1. Open Sync and enter your server’s address along with your account credentials. Click Sign In when you’re finished.

   

   Figure 2: The first time you run Liferay Sync, you must tell it how to communicate with your Liferay DXP server.

   When connecting to a server via HTTPS, an error appears if the certificate can’t be verified. Choosing Proceed Anyway bypasses verification and leaves the connection open to compromise. Liferay Sync attempts to read the certificates specified in the Java Control Panel (see section 20.4.5). If Java isn’t installed, you can also put your certificates in [user.home]/.liferay-sync-3/certificates. Liferay Sync trusts all certificates in this folder.

   

   Figure 3: When connecting over HTTPS, Liferay Sync produces an error if it can't verify the security certificate. Choosing *Proceed Anyway* bypasses verification and leaves the connection open to compromise.

2. Select the Sites you want to sync with. You can search for a Site in the Search bar above the Site list. If you want to sync all the subfolders of your selected Sites, click Proceed and move on to the next step.

   

   Figure 4: Select the Sites you want to sync with. Clicking a Site's gear icon opens another window where you can choose to sync with only specific subfolders in that Site.

   To sync only specific folders in a Site, first click the Site’s gear icon. In the window that appears, all folders are selected by default. Unselect the folders you don’t want to sync with. Unselecting a subfolder causes the parent folder’s checkbox to show a minus sign, indicating that you haven’t selected all of the parent folder’s subfolders. To sync only the documents at the top of a folder’s hierarchy (no subfolders), unselect all of that folder’s subfolders. You can also do this by clicking the folder’s checkbox until the minus sign appears. Click Select when you’re finished with your selections, and then click Proceed to move on to the next step.

   

   Figure 5: Choose the Site's subfolders that you want to sync with. The checkbox with the minus sign indicates that not all of the *registration* folder's subfolders are selected.

3. Specify the local folder to sync. This folder is used exclusively for Sync: Sync creates it and it must not conflict with any existing local folder. The Sync folder’s default name is the instance’s host name, and its default location is the user’s documents folder. For example, since the instance in the following screenshots runs locally at the address http://localhost:8080/, Sync creates a Sync folder named localhost in the user’s documents folder. You can, of course, specify any unique name and location for the Sync folder. Click Start Syncing to begin syncing files.

   Note: Syncing to network drives is not supported because Liferay Sync can’t reliably detect local file changes on such drives.

   

   Figure 6: Specify your local Sync folder's name and location.

4. Celebrate! You’ve successfully set up Liferay Sync! Sync congratulates you on setting it up and begins to sync files from the Sites you selected to your local Sync folder. Note, completing the initial synchronization may take a significant amount of time, depending on the amount of data being transferred. You can safely close the window as syncing continues in the background. To view the local Sync folder, click Open Folder. To open Sync’s preferences, click the small gray text advanced setup near the top-right.

   

   Figure 7: Congratulations, you've successfully set up Liferay Sync!