Guide/Tutorial - How to set up automatic Save File syncing between OpenMW Android and PC versions

Support for running, installing or compiling OpenMW

Before you submit a bug report for the first time, please read: Bug reporting guidelines
Post Reply
Lor91
Posts: 1
Joined: 07 Sep 2019, 10:50

Guide/Tutorial - How to set up automatic Save File syncing between OpenMW Android and PC versions

Post by Lor91 »

This is a guide I originally posted on Reddit about a year ago and finally got around to posting here. TL;DR it lets you sync your OpenMW saves near-seamlessly across android and PC. Apologies in advance to my fellow Linux people because I did, in the end, forget about you :(

Original post (and probably nicer formatting) here: https://www.reddit.com/r/OpenMW/comment ... save_file/

>>> You can skip this bit if you just want the guide

Hi all,

This is probably my first tutorial / guidance I've ever written intended for others to use (outside of work). Normally everytime I need to do something someone has already written a full guide for it, I couldn't find one for this, so hopefully it's useful to someone. Any feedback is appreciated.

Having seen a whole bunch of posts from Android OpenMW one of the most common comments I saw was people having issue with trying to play this game using touch screen, even if they thought it was a cool idea. Having played it myself I found the android port amazingly well done and didn't feel there wasn't anything I couldn't do, but certain things (mostly inventory management) are a bit slow and painful on it. That being said, NOT being able to play it while on the move now feels too restrictive to me.

So, as the meme goes, why not both?

I thought fine, I'll just install two copies and move the saves around. Cool. Except it ended up being kind of annoying having to manually copy the files from my phone onto my PC everytime I wanted to play, plus I forgot a couple of times and had to reload the game.

That got me thinking of trying some kind of hybrid solution, where I could play on my phone and then 'dock' at a PC and play the game on a bigger screen with a keyboard.

It ... Worked, kinda, but was the most awkward and janky control set I've ever used in a game (ended up using my PC mouse, with a bluetooth keyboard connected to the phone, and having to click and drag the touch screen joysticks, and move it out of the way if I wanted to type on my PC, bleugh, oh and the graphics were crap compared to what my PC can pull off).

So, finally I had the idea I should have had at the start, automatic cloud-based save file syncing across devices!

This is the first initial draft of the guide, I came upon the idea after finding a reddit post from a few months ago mentioning the use of the FolderSync app to create filepairs, but didn't find one that took you through the whole process of creating automatic save sync for OpenMW between your PC and phone.

I haven't forgotten my fellow Linux users, I don't currently have a Linux install on my gaming machine but will have in the next few weeks, though the only differences will be needing to get a cloud drive client synced to a local folder, which was a more manual process the last time I used Linux, and whether to sym or hard link the folders.


So, the guide:

WARNING: Do not attempt to follow this guide without making a full backup of your saves folder, move the backup to another location on your device (or another device altogether) - You can obviously ignore this message, but given we are setting up automatic 2-way syncing, if you make a mistake you could wipe your saves.

Some notes:
  • This guide uses OneDrive as the cloud storage account, but there are many other options which should work just as well with the app provided you have them set up on your PC with a folder marked for syncing.

    It's a good idea to have one save location completely empty, then once ready force a one way sync then enable 2-way syncing. I recommend creating a NEW empty folder in your cloud storage for this.

    I recommend you move all save files you intend to sync to your Android device first, and move/delete them on PC, this guide does everything in a certain order and expects that you are starting with an empty PC save folder, an empty Cloud storage folder and an Android save folder filled with all your intended OpenMW saves.

    Given the above, if you only wish to sync one character's saves then where I have the 'saves' folder below, go one deeper and select that character's folder
Initial setup on Android:
  • Download FolderSync (free or pro, your choice, I used free)

    Add your One Drive account

    Use the settings/startup wizard to access "enabled external storage"

    Use the vertical dots in the top right to select "show internal storage"

    Then press the top left horizonal bars, your root storage folder should appear now

    Press into each folder until you find the one you want to add (Default is: rootstoragefolder/omw/saves, then press the 'select' button

    The app has now been given permission to use the folder
Created paired folder on windows:
  • Locate your OpenMW saves folder, normally C:\Users\USERNAME\Documents\My Games\OpenMW\saves

    Locate the local folder for your cloud account, this is the folder which you can open on your machine which is synced to the root folder of your cloud account, find the folder you (should) have created earlier for OpenMW saves

    Open CMD.exe and run the following command, you will need to edit the filepaths to match your own folder structure - Remember you are linking your normal OpenMW save folder with the locally sync'd OneDrive directory.
mklink /j "C:\Users\USERNAME\OneDrive\games\openmw\saves" "C:\Users\USERNAME\Documents\My Games\OpenMW\saves"

The expected output should be:

Junction created for C:\Users\USERNAME\OneDrive\games\openmw\saves <<===>> C:\Users\USERNAME\Documents\My Games\OpenMW\saves

Create paired folder on android.
  • Press the top left menu button in FolderSync and select "Folder Pairs"

    Sync Type - INITIALL set this to one-way, local to remote, this will push your current OpenMW saves on your Android device to the empty folder in the cloud

    Local folder is the omw saves folder you gave permission to earlier, same as before navigate until you are inside the folder and click 'select'

    Remote folder will open your cloud account, go into the empty saves folder you (should) have created and his select, now we'll configure the folder pair settings.

    Scheduling - Use Scheduled Sync to On, Sync interval Hourly

    Sync options - Sync Subfolders and Hidden files to On (just in case), "Overwrite old files" should be set to Always, and "If conflicting moderations" should be set to Overwrite oldest

    Connection - Untick everything but wifi unless you want to use mobile data for this.

    (Optional) enable notifications to keep you informed of sync progress

    Once complete hit "Save"

    If you receive an error stating something like "Name, account, local and remote folders must be ..." then you have likely not correctly given the app permission to use the folder, return to the initial android setup section then come back here

    Once you have pushed the saves to the cloud, check they've synced there by using your cloud drive's web portal or checking on another machine, once there check your PC's local folder and force a sync if necessary

    Once you've confirmed the same files are on the phone, cloud and PC, you can go back to the folder pair settings in FolderSync and set the sync type at the top to '2 way', now
And that's it! Now when you go into folder pairs you have the option to manually force a sync and check details of the next scheduled sync, as well as view status updates for the previous sync


Force auto-download of saves for OneDrive.
  • Right click OneDrive and go to settings / settings / Files on Demand

    Untick save space and download when you use - annoying but otherwise the saves would have to be manually moved / synced as far as I can see, at least with OneDrive, my OneDrive isn't large though so I'll admit I haven't done much testing of this to see if it can be set for a specific folder.
Final notes

You can set a scheduled hourly sync of your android saves through FolderSync, but there is also an option to "Sync now" when you open folder pairs, when you're done playing on your phone hit this to upload your saves immediately.

Unless you have a particularly hefty data package you should disable syncing over mobile data, it can be restricted to just wifi in the folder pair settings in FolderSync.

If your OneDrive saves are not syncing right click your OneDrive, click exit, then open it again and it will force a sync. I tend to do this anyway before I switch my PC off just in case.

It's a good idea when you're about ready to switch devices to give your save file a unique name, as when the sync occurs any changed changed/new files will all have a modified date + time matching the sync time, so they won't be ordered normally in the load game screen.
Post Reply