In the digital world, not all letters are created equal. You’ve likely felt this, even if you couldn’t name the problem. Perhaps you’re a designer putting the final touches on a masterpiece in macOS. You name it something perfectly descriptive, like Project Árvore – Final Proposal (ü).psd. You copy it to a USB drive or upload it to a generic cloud folder to share with a client using a Windows PC. Then you see it—the filename distorted beyond recognition, or worse, duplicated into near-clones—and a quiet panic creeps in, and you wonder, did I do something wrong?
The answer to the distorted file name lies in a technical detail called Unicode Normalization, the subtle culprit behind the Project Árvore (ü) problem. A character like “é” may look simple, but digitally, it can be constructed in two different ways.
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NFC (Normalization Form Composition) is like a ready-made cake mix, where each character is stored as a single efficient encoding. This is the standard used by Windows and most of the web.
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NFD (Normalization Form Decomposition) is the “from-scratch” version, which separates a character into its base components. For instance, the Á in Árvore is stored as the letter ‘A’ plus a separate accent mark (´), and the ü is stored as ‘u’ plus the two dots, or diaeresis (¨). macOS often uses this form for its flexibility in searching. Other characters like ‘é’ or ‘ñ’ are handled the same way.
To a user, Á looks the same in both forms. But to a computer that operates on pure logic, the two versions are as different as “A” and “B,” which is why it can potentially cause problems down the line, such as breaking synchronization.
Synology Drive as a Universal Translator
This is where Synology Drive shines. It acts as an intelligent middleperson that ensures filename consistency across platforms. The moment a file is uploaded to Synology Drive, its name is automatically and transparently translated into the universal NFC format. This isn’t just a superficial filter; it’s ingrained in the server architecture, so every file maintains a single, consistent identity from the outset.
This, and other known cross-platform issues that cause data inconsistencies and waste time, are the focus of our engineers at Synology. We build preventative solutions directly into Synology Drive, ensuring these problems are resolved before they impact your workflow.
To see this framework in action, let’s look at a few common hurdles and how this system navigates them.
Resolving Identity Conflicts
Is Report.docx the same as report.docx? The answer to this simple question is a major source of cross-platform conflict.
On a case-sensitive system, like the Linux environment that powers a Synology server, Annual Report.pdf and annual report.pdf are two completely different files. They can and do exist together in the same folder on the server, each with its original name.
However, this creates an impossible situation for the case-insensitive systems used by default in Windows and modern macOS. For these operating systems, Annual Report.pdf and annual report.pdf are the exact same file. A sync client trying to download both files to a Mac or PC would fail, as it cannot create two files with what it considers the same name in the same location.
Synology Drive resolves this with an application layer that acts as a mediator between the server’s file system and the user.
While both files remain with their original names on the server, the Synology Drive web portal detects the potential for conflict. In the web portal, it will display one of the files with an appended name. This visual distinction achieves two critical goals:
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Clarity for the User: You can immediately see that two separate files exist, even if their names only differ by capitalization.
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Error-Free Syncing: When you download the files or sync them to your computer, Drive uses these distinct display names, ensuring that both files arrive safely on your Mac or PC without conflicts or data loss.
The High Cost of a Simple Rename
Another subtle but frustrating issue arises during something as routine as renaming a file. Have you ever renamed a file only to find that its version history has vanished? Or that the share link you sent to a colleague is now broken? This happens when a sync application treats a “rename” as two separate events: “delete the old file” and “create a new one.” From the application’s perspective, the file’s identity is destroyed, and all its associated metadata—versions, comments, tags, and sharing permissions—are lost with it.
The Synology Drive sync logic is designed to understand user intent. It recognizes that a rename is not a deletion but a modification of an existing file’s properties. By tracking the file’s underlying identity, not just its name, Drive ensures that when you rename Draft.docx to , its entire history and all its metadata are preserved. The file’s journey continues uninterrupted, protecting your work.
Why This Matters: Simplicity Built on Complexity
Handling encoding quirks and identity mismatches might sound arcane, but it’s how we simplify your experience. You shouldn’t have to learn the rules of different file systems; you should just be able to create, save, and share, knowing a silent, reliable system is ensuring your files are understood everywhere. It’s a quiet promise, encoded into every line of our software, to deliver peace of mind. In a world where file systems speak different languages, Synology Drive ensures your files never get lost in translation.