diff --git a/core/dr-sync-nextcloud/src/lib.rs b/core/dr-sync-nextcloud/src/lib.rs
index 8db855e..7cda5e9 100644
--- a/core/dr-sync-nextcloud/src/lib.rs
+++ b/core/dr-sync-nextcloud/src/lib.rs
@@ -637,11 +637,23 @@ pub fn http_client(user_agent: &str) -> Result<reqwest::Client, RemoteError> {
         // webpki-roots set is still installed alongside.
         .tls_certs_only(extra_roots())
         // A request that hangs forever is indistinguishable from a worker that
-        // died, and cost a long time to tell apart once. Connect and total
-        // timeouts turn that into an error the UI can show. Generous enough for
-        // a slow phone on mobile data; the login poll has its own deadline.
+        // died, and cost a long time to tell apart once. These turn that into
+        // an error the UI can show.
         .connect_timeout(std::time::Duration::from_secs(15))
-        .timeout(std::time::Duration::from_secs(60))
+        // **Inactivity, not duration.** This was a 60-second *total* timeout,
+        // which is not a hang detector at all — it is a floor on link speed.
+        // A face shard runs to 25 MB, so it demanded a sustained 425 KB/s or
+        // the transfer failed; and having failed it was retried on the next
+        // pass, and failed again, for ever. A tablet on ordinary wifi could
+        // therefore never finish adopting a library's faces, and nothing said
+        // why: each attempt looked like a network blip rather than an
+        // arithmetic impossibility.
+        //
+        // `read_timeout` fires when *no bytes arrive* for the given period,
+        // which is the condition actually worth failing on. A slow transfer
+        // that is still moving now finishes, however long it takes, while a
+        // connection that has genuinely died is still caught in a minute.
+        .read_timeout(std::time::Duration::from_secs(60))
         .build()
         .map_err(|e| RemoteError::Network(e.to_string()))
 }