After giving up Nextcloud – which is now overkill for me with 30.000 files of basic setup – I am syncing now using iCloud. As I am working only on the desktop, it would make sense to sync the desktop in regular intervals but unfortunately this can be done only together with the Documents folder (something I don’t want). SE has also no good solution, so here is mine

# make another Desktop in iCloud folder
mkdir -p ~/Library/Mobile\ Documents/com~apple~CloudDocs/iCloudDesktop

# sync local Desktop
rsync -av --delete ~/Desktop/ ~/Library/Mobile\ Documents/com~apple~CloudDocs/iCloudDesktop/

# and run it every hour or so
# launchctl load ~/Library/LaunchAgents/launched.com.desktop.rsync.plist

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
  <dict>
    <key>KeepAlive</key>
    <dict>
      <key>Crashed</key>
      <true/>
    </dict>

    <key>Label</key>
    <string>launched.com.desktop.rsync</string>

    <key>ProgramArguments</key>
    <array>
      <string>/usr/bin/rsync</string>
      <string>-av</string>
      <string>--delete</string>
      <string>/Users/xxx/Desktop/</string>
      <string>/Users/xxx/Library/Mobile Documents/com~apple~CloudDocs/iCloudDesktop/</string>
    </array>

    <key>RunAtLoad</key>
    <true/>

    <key>StartCalendarInterval</key>
    <array>
      <dict>
        <key>Minute</key>
        <integer>0</integer>
      </dict>
    </array>

    <key>StandardOutPath</key>
    <string>/tmp/rsync.out</string>

    <key>StandardErrorPath</key>
    <string>/tmp/rsync.err</string>
  </dict>
</plist>