Option to download missing files rather than auto-download?

I’m mainly using DT to index and tag a very large number (>100GB) of PDFs and other files. These are not files I can always keep on my machine due to disk space and it is also not practical to use an external drive for them (I’ve read the various forum posts suggesting this). All the PDFs are on an iCloud Drive and I regularly remove the downloads, only keeping local versions of ones I use often.

All of this works pretty seamlessly. I’m mostly working from home and, unlike some of the naysayers, I really do generally have persistent connection. And I plan if I’m traveling.

DT can more or less handle this (obviously the DT database is always local – it only stores the index data since I’m not putting the files in there), but having the preview pane open always immediately downloads the file from iCloud. I can, of course, turn the preview panel off, but sometimes I want to just tap through a list of files and be able to see previews of those that are available. I think it would be desirable to have the option to turn this behaviour off and just have DT either show a blank PDF icon and/or the cloud download icon so I could pull it down should I wish, not automatically. This wouldn’t break any of the functionality of DT as far as I can tell, though I assume some of the “see also” might not be as potent.

I can’t see this as an option anywhere, so if it does exist, perhaps someone could point me to it.

Welcome @aapolaine

No, currently there is not such an option.

Is this something you might consider? It would seem not to be a major undertaking unless it somehow interferes with the rest of DT’s functioning.

I don’t recall other such requests but Development is the one who would ultimately have to assess this.