25 ms·

Syncthing Usage Data

238 points by GutenYe 10y ago

dragly 10y ago
It amazes me that Syncthing handles rapidly-changing files better for me than Dropbox. Where Dropbox has left different versions of files on different computers even after they have changed multiple times, Syncthing happily synchronizes them without issues. And the fact that Syncthing is open source and allows me to keep files on my own machines is a big plus. However, I would love to see a paid option for easy backup of selected files to a machine in the cloud. Some people want their files backed up and accessible through a web service and I wish I could recommend Syncthing to them as well.
- XorNot 10y ago
  Does syncthing have a backup option? Last I recall it didn't, which kind of soured me on it - in an ideal world every sync operation would be prefaced with "send a backup to one of my backup endpoints first".
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - noja 10y ago
    Depends on your use case. You can configure it to keep versions of files: https://docs.syncthing.net/users/versioning.html https://docs.syncthing.net/users/versioning.html (But Syncthing is intended for file syncing, not backup.)
  - SunSparc 10y ago
    Backing up your filesystem can and really should be part of an entirely different process. Let syncthing focus on syncing. Get CrashPlan, rsync, or some other process going on your filesystem for backups. Unless you are hoping for backing up every single version of your documents.
  - bedros 10y ago
    check out borg backup, it's my favorite backup tool
    - ptman 10y ago
      https://www.stavros.io/posts/holy-grail-backups/ https://www.stavros.io/posts/holy-grail-backups/
- jamwt 10y ago
  Just a heads up: that almost certainly means SyncThing is failing to recognize some classes of conflicts and concurrency races, and is destroying some changes. Doing this right is a hard problem. I know they can be a pain to deal with, but we don't spin out conflicts for no reason! Disclosure: I work on the Dropbox sync engine.
  - growse 10y ago
    Do you have any specific bug or design reference to the Syncthing codebase that illustrates this, or do you simply believe that it's impossible to do it faster than Dropbox does it? Fwiw, i frequently get notifications from Syncthing that it's found a conflict it can't resolve and asks me to resolve manually.
    - jamwt 10y ago
      Sorry, not super familiar with Syncthing. It's definitely not impossible to do better than Dropbox, but to some degree, as in all things, it's a function of engineering resources, telemetry, and usage. We've likely put 25-100x more resources into solving this problem over the last 10 years, and we just have a lot more data b/c we have 100s of millions of users on lots of platforms using Dropbox with every application you can imagine. So we're able to tease out the "long tail" of weird file system and application behavior in a way that's very difficult for smaller projects. Truly durable conflict management in the face of arbitrary mutations by user applications on the filesystem ends up being a really, really hard problem to cover exhaustively. The Dropbox client handles literally hundreds of special cases. So, yeah, I believe it is (in general) safe to assume that Dropbox is probably doing A-more-correct-thing for a complicated (and admittedly confusing) reason when it comes to sync behavior. But we're not perfect--we do still find surprises from time to time, so feel free to contact support if you see something that looks wrong!
  - amelius 10y ago
    Are you saying that you solve conflicts specifically for different types of applications (e.g., Word, Photoshop, Excel)? That's impressive. However, now I'm wondering how I get my own apps supported.
baldfat 10y ago
I would love to use Synchthing but Bit Torrent Sync, now known as Resilio Sync, works behind firewalls so much better. Hope to one day come back to syncthing.
- noja 10y ago
  Syncthing works fine behind and through firewalls. Which year did you last use it?
  - baldfat 10y ago
    Last year. I am in different Public School networks and SyncThing still got caught. I worked for hours to figure it out and just couldn't :( Did they beef it up since last year?
    - noja 10y ago
      There are public relays which you can use (automatically unless you disable the feature), so NATing and firewalls shouldn't be an issue.
      - pricechild 10y ago
        I think they're upset that the Network Administrator is blocking the system intentionally, not that it didn't make it through in the first place. Don't upset your Network Administrators!
        baldfat 10y ago
        Well I am in about 10 different school districts and they all have different policies. I just won't do anything that won't work as a default so I can claim ignorance.
okket 10y ago
And it looks like two of the last really big tipping stones are being addressed: 1) Advanced NAT traversal via UDP, which is is less efficient than TCP, but orders of magnitude better than relying on relays. More about this here: https://kastelo.net/2017/03/08/syncthing-kcp.html https://kastelo.net/2017/03/08/syncthing-kcp.html 2) Internal filesystem notification watch facility for near realtime sync (currently possible via an external service -> syncthing-inotify). For more see pull request https://github.com/syncthing/syncthing/pull/3986 https://github.com/syncthing/syncthing/pull/3986 The future looks bright! Addendum: Have a look at the community forum https://forum.syncthing.net https://forum.syncthing.net
mouldysammich 10y ago
syncthing honestly is one of the best pieces of software i use. It manages a fairly often changing music library, a lossy copy of it, and my phones photos really handily all on a raspberry pi 1. One of my favourite programs i use daily.
thewhitetulip 10y ago
I have been a happy user of syncthing, it is brilliant Piece of software, I no longer have to run around looking for data cable, I just open my laptop, and it syncs the complete file system!
jepper 10y ago
Brilliant piece of software. Perfect to gather data from different devices to backup in the cloud or to sync documents or a massive music collection. The only thing missing is an encrypted external sync node so I can put it on a VPS somewhere
- nisa 10y ago
  There are tools like gocryptfs or cryfs that solve that problem to a degree. cryfs even makes the directory structure and file names opaque with chunking the encrypted data in small blocks but this turns quickly into a benchmark of your sync software (i.e. don't use it with Nextcloud, the client can't cope well and fast with lot's of small files at least for the initial sync). Not sure if syncthing is better. Didn't came around to testing gocryptfs, but if you don't need the chunking it looks like the better alternative. https://nuetzlich.net/gocryptfs/comparison/ https://nuetzlich.net/gocryptfs/comparison/ https://www.cryfs.org/comparison https://www.cryfs.org/comparison
- sinatra 10y ago
  This is the blocker for me too. Support for a zero knowledge server where even if someone gets access to the filesystem on the server, they can only see it encrypted. Other than that, Syncthing is absolutely amazing!
  - qznc 10y ago
    I would like to mix it. Then my desktop could be a mirror for my friend without knowing his files and vice versa.
    - keksberg 10y ago
      Is there any other solution that is capable of exactly that?
      - brtw 10y ago
        Crash plan does something like that for backup
aerique 10y ago
This goes against one of the points of Syncthing (but I'm more interested in its other features): are there any good 3rd-party hosts so I don't have the hassle of maintaining on myself?
- mouldysammich 10y ago
  It's paid but seedboxes sometimes support syncthing. Seedhost.eu i know for example supports it.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
fiatjaf 10y ago
Since no one is complaining: I find Syncthing too complicated to set up. You must create a folder, then get a number for a computer (which you end up writing in a pastepad or something like that because the two computers don't communicate), then go to the other computer and place the number in, then do the same for the second computer to the first. Repeat it for 5 or 6 machines. If any machine is switched what do you do? Start over again establishing the link with all other machines.
- fiatjaf 10y ago
  I came to wander if there was market demand for some kind of "Syncthing Admin" that would centralize this process for corporative users, and provide other kinds of features (commands from "Syncthing Admin" could be transmitted through Syncthing itself!).
- meonkeys 10y ago
  I think the "introducer" feature is supposed to simplify this process, but I don't understand it.
  - okket 10y ago
    Once you established a connection to the 'introducer', it will introduce your device to all other devices it knows and vice versa. You still need to authorise these introductions on the devices, but no typing/copying of crypto strings.
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
- okket 10y ago
  This is the price you have to pay for a (secure) decentralised system, but syncthing tries to help where it can. E.g. you can set a syncthing instance as an 'introducer', so you only have to establish a connection to this device to get offered connections to all others devices. You still need to authorise these introductions on the devices, but you do not need to type in the crypto verification strings.
odabaxok 10y ago
Can anyone share their experiences with Syncthing compared to Resilio Sync (aka Bit Torrent Sync)? I am using Resilio Sync since its beta version, but they have added a lot of restrictions since then and made some functions only available for paying users. I am concerned about ease of use (setup and everyday usage) on Windows and Android.
- mouldysammich 10y ago
  I used syncthing when it first came out on windows and it was very easy to set up so i can only assume its improved since then, and the android app is quite good. it has a large number of settings and you can make it only run when you're charging so you dong use all your batter.
  - odabaxok 10y ago
    Thanks for the reply. In the meantime, I have checked Syncthing forums and I have found this topic: https://forum.syncthing.net/t/why-im-moving-back-to-btsync-resilio/8891 https://forum.syncthing.net/t/why-im-moving-back-to-btsync-r... It is exactly complaining about the ease of use on Windows and Android, saying there is no native GUI, etc. From this description it seems, that Syncthing is not there, yet.
    - mouldysammich 10y ago
      There isnt a native gui, in that its in the browser but that isnt really a problem i would have said. it allows the developers to focus on a cross-platform good backend and have a crossplatform frontend without the issues that come with having that.
- vocatus_gate 10y ago
  Oh boy can I ever. We used Resilio Sync (aka Bittorrent Sync aka BT Sync) for a while for the Tron project ( https://reddit.com/r/TronScript https://reddit.com/r/TronScript ). It worked great for our use-case: distributing a large number of files to a large number of nodes who required read-only access. Anytime I changed a file on the master node it would blast out to everyone else while simultaneously preventing any other node in the swarm from propagating changes. Unfortunately with all the restrictions they introduced, it stopped working reliably. Internally they introduced a hard-coded peer cap of something like 32, while our swarm was already over 500. We switched to Syncthing and it's been working well. There is still one major issue and that's that anyone can mark their copy of the folder as "read-only" (formerly called "Master"), and then they will attempt to propagate changes out to the rest of the swarm. So, there's that. But strictly on a distributed file syncing level, it works great.
vocatus_gate 10y ago
As a heavy user of Syncthing for the Tron project ( https://reddit.com/r/TronScript https://reddit.com/r/TronScript ) I'm excited to see how well Syncthing is doing, and really appreciate the hard work from the devs. We spun up a Syncthing node to distribute the project after Resilio Sync (formerly "BT Sync") put a hard cap on the number of nodes that were allowed to connect. Keep up the great work, team!
- josephb 10y ago
  For those with some spare CPU cycles and bandwidth you can give back to the project by running a relay server. https://docs.syncthing.net/users/strelaysrv.html https://docs.syncthing.net/users/strelaysrv.html Eg that VM running a DNS adblocker, from another front page article :)
  - pricechild 10y ago
    What's the drive or motivation behind people running syncthing discovery & relay servers? Do they generally then run their own clients to only use their own servers? With Tor I'm convinced over the "speech should be free, I'm making the world a better place" type argument. With syncthing I'm incredibly impressed that this optional (but incredibly useful) infrastructure is being run by people for free since it doesn't quite make the world a better place in the same way? It just saves a bunch of other people setting up their own relay/discovery server on a cheap linode/aws instance? Impressed!
    - Nutomic 10y ago
      I think people just want to help others, and do something useful with their spare resources. I run a relay on a server on my home internet connection, so it doesn't cost me anything.
      - 2bluesc 10y ago
        > I think people just want to help others, and do something useful with their spare resources. I run a relay on a server on my home internet connection, so it doesn't cost me anything. Same. The devs the contribute their time to build syncthing, the least I can do to help their (our?) cause is to spend 10-60 minutes to setup a relay and spend 5 minutes to babysit it every other month.
pedrocr 10y ago
Has anyone been able to sync large folders with syncthing? Last time I tried when syncing 500GB you'd end up using >500MB of memory which made it unusable for home NAS setups. Hopefully it has since improved?
- noja 10y ago
  Are you running an official build? This page indicates that your usage should be around 80 megs (with the gui closed): https://forum.syncthing.net/t/huge-ram-usage-2gb-on-synology-ds1513/8845/9 https://forum.syncthing.net/t/huge-ram-usage-2gb-on-synology... and that an unofficial NAS-specific build had a problem with high ram usage.
  - pedrocr 10y ago
    I always ran official builds, my NAS are just standard x86 servers. Last time I checked was January 2015: https://github.com/syncthing/syncthing/issues/468#issuecomment-70808104 https://github.com/syncthing/syncthing/issues/468#issuecomme... Since that bug was closed with no solution I'm not too hopeful but maybe I should try it again.
    - Nutomic 10y ago
      If you can reproduce the issue, be sure to post on the forum so we can figure out the cause.
      - pedrocr 10y ago
        See the bug report at the time. It was closed without being fixed and it was 100% reproducible. Maybe it's fixed now but no one was too worried about it then and I saw similar reports on the forums for a while before I lost interest. I should either try syncthing again or finally test infinit completely. This is the last piece of the puzzle I'm missing to have a fully workable personal data management solution that allows me to bring up a completely new laptop with my full config and data with just a clean Ubuntu install and a few commands.
problems 10y ago
Interesting that the mobile usage seems to be so low from this, I sync my desktop, NAS and phone using Syncthing constantly. I also reject any sort of statistics though, so I'm probably not helping.
- swiley 10y ago
  I've run both the mobile and desktop version on my phone and it just drains the battery way too fast. I ended up just using an rsync cron job to sync my phone over ssh while everything else uses syncthing (and yes, I know this means I can't delete anything but I very rarely do anyway.)
  - problems 10y ago
    You can set it to sync only on wifi and/or only when charging, which has always done the job for me. Depends on your use case, but things like password DBs need to be update-able from both directions, which rsync doesn't really do. On the other hand, I can rely on the fact that I don't need my home to be sync'd up unless I'm actually at home, on wifi.
- Nutomic 10y ago
  The Android version targets Linux (due to some issues with Golang), which means it doesn't show up in the Android section. Actual usage reporting data for Android is ~2800 devices or ~11.7%.
darrmit 10y ago
Syncthing is awesome. It is more difficult to setup than something like Dropbox (though, scanning QR codes is pretty easy IMO), but that has gotten exponentially better over the last year or so via the community and it seems to only be getting better.
gravypod 10y ago
Is there something like Syncthing that works like a RAID system? I'd like to use multiple computers in different locations and use them to backup and expand my storage size. Basically redundant but distributed storage with N node fail tolerance. Preferably interfaceable via a "/mnt/cloud" directory so I can use it from my laptop and easily write backup scripts and store data into it. If this existed I'd have something big to work on setting up next week.
- zurn 10y ago
  Syncthing does redundancy by default, no? Just add a node. But RAID and Syncthing aren't substitutes for backups, for the same reason: no restore if your data get hosed.
  - gravypod 10y ago
    I don't really want syncing. I want a distrabution of the blocks of the filesystem that allows for redundant storage & expansion of storage space. RW times would be slower but storage would be bigger and more redundant.
    - onli 10y ago
      Is it possible you look for something like Ceph? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ceph_(software) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ceph_(software)
      - gravypod 10y ago
        That seems to be focused on throughput. I'm focused on how much data I can store into the system and if it's redundant so long as N nodes don't die (and if they do I'd like it to attempt to reorganize the network so they system keeps working with N node failure).
        jabl 10y ago
        Tahoe-LAFS ( https://tahoe-lafs.org/trac/tahoe-lafs https://tahoe-lafs.org/trac/tahoe-lafs ) then?
therealmarv 10y ago
I loved the concept and hated the battery consumption on Android devices. Well it works totally different than a normal cloud storage so there is nobody really to blame but I cannot afford that much battery on my small 5" phone. Also did not liked that dates are not correctly on Android (but again this is not Syncthing fault). Why we cannot have date correction on external storage (without root) like on desktop file systems on Android? :(
mduerksen 10y ago
Syncthing is sorely missing iOS support. I know they have their reasons not to implement it[0], but I feel that feature might be worth the hassle. Photo sync on iOS without iCloud is a huge pain atm. My backup strategy involves a NAS folder that stays up to date (i.e. also deletes photos that I delete on my phone), and which I occasionally sort into final location. After that I can free the space on my phone. All other options (including Resilio Sync) are a add-only "sync"[1], which makes it annoying to sift through all the photos including those I already weeded out a week ago. [0] https://docs.syncthing.net/users/faq.html#why-is-there-no-ios-client https://docs.syncthing.net/users/faq.html#why-is-there-no-io... [1] In theory, Resilio has a real sync, but for some reason, not for the iOS camera roll.
- Nutomic 10y ago
  Syncthing is entirely made by volunteers, and so far no one has had the time or interest to work on an iOS app. If you (or someone else) wants to work on an iOS app, that would definitely appreciated.
- merpnderp 10y ago
  To avoid lock-in with Apple, I tried Amazon Drive for photos. It has worked perfectly for backing up media to their cloud storage. So now I keep my photos in two places.
- freehunter 10y ago
  I actually use OneDrive and it automatically syncs my camera roll from iOS. I use both iCloud and OneDrive and they've both worked basically the same since the day I started using it.
Nutomic 10y ago
Note that usage reporting is disabled by default, and has to be enabled manually. The Android app alone has around 30.000 active installs according to Google Play statistics. Usage reporting only shows about 2.000 of those. Based on this data, I would estimate that there are between 100.000 and 300.000 active installations of Syncthing. Source: I'm the maintainer of the Syncthing Android app.
- voltagex_ 10y ago
  Thanks for your work. Is there any way to get additional information about why a phone and a desktop client on the same LAN can't see each other? (or take 10+ minutes to sync?)
  - canton7 10y ago
    Post on the forum (https://forum.syncthing.net https://forum.syncthing.net) -- that's where you'll get the best level of support.
canton7 10y ago
One of the common complaints about Syncthing is the lack of native UI (you use your web browser), and the difficulty in setting it up for non-technical users (copying an executable into a directory, running it directly, setting it to automatically start on login aren't something you'd ask your parents / grandparents to do). The homepage recommends Syncnthing-GTK (https://github.com/syncthing/syncthing-gtk https://github.com/syncthing/syncthing-gtk) (Cross-Platform) and SyncTrayzor (https://github.com/canton7/SyncTrayzor https://github.com/canton7/SyncTrayzor) (Windows only) to help with these pain points. The provide installers, more native-feeling UIs, tray icons, etc. There are also a large number of other Community Contributions (https://docs.syncthing.net/users/contrib.html https://docs.syncthing.net/users/contrib.html).
robinson-wall 10y ago
Interesting drop in the numbers when version 0.12 was released. Does anyone know what that was about?
- Nutomic 10y ago
  Iirc there were some changes to usage reporting (additional data reported), so users were prompted to enable usage reporting again.
- CyberShadow 10y ago
  IIRC it was due to the new version having a protocol incompatibility with the old version, which means that users needed to upgrade SyncThing on all of their devices simultaneously to keep using it. I can certainly see how that could be a hassle especially when SyncThing is installed via a package manager or in the case of the Android app, where different sources provide different versions.
phaemon 10y ago
This looks pretty cool, and I'll definitely look at it as a Dropbox replacement. On the negative side, your stats page doesn't have a link back to your main page, so you won't even know how many folk had a look based on this HN post. It's a good idea to ensure that all your pages have a link back to your main page.
- canton7 10y ago
  Yeah that page which was linked to isn't really part of the website: it's a separate site entirely, which is a frontend to the data-collection service. People aren't really supposed to link to it directly as a means of introducing new people to Syncthing...
  - phaemon 10y ago
    Indeed, but you never know what page someone might submit to a site like HN, so it's usually a good idea to have a link back to your main site on all pages. For example, they could like to your Forum page (which doesn't have a link to your main page). Or to your Github page (which has a link to the Forum, but not to the main page). Or your Docs page (which...well, you get the idea). Sites that have witty and inventive 404 pages sometimes get those publicised. You really never know what someone will choose to submit.
- Proven 10y ago
  Why wouldn't they know? Check all IPs that visited both the linked and home page and you'll know.
sneak 10y ago
I had to stop using syncthing on my MacBook and MacBook Air because it was using far too much ram/cpu. I wish it could be made more efficient somehow.
- Nutomic 10y ago
  You could give sync thing minority a try: https://github.com/syncthing/syncthing-inotify https://github.com/syncthing/syncthing-inotify
interfixus 10y ago
Nicely, nicely crafted software, and getting better by each bump. I have been running it like forever between various Android devices, day to day PC, backup server, and whichever relevant devices have been passing through the household. Just works, can't recommend it enough. The GTK gui is a handy extra.
Nux 10y ago
I'm using Syncthing to distribute files in a web cluster of a few servers instead of using shared storage - thus avoiding the spof. Works quite well, with a few gotchas (ie make sure you don't sync cache files, session files etc). Good software!
jcoffland 10y ago
I have one suggestion for the authors. Make it clear on the front page exactly what Syncthing does. There's lots of information about Syncthing's qualities but if you don't already know what the software does, it's not obvious.
- adrianratnapala 10y ago
  Hear Ye! But the same suggestion could be made about almost any product with a web-site these days. Indeed Syncthing is doing much better than most; they have a box at the top of the page with a one-sentence explanation/plug.
  - bedros 10y ago
    happy syncthing user here; I agree with comment above, syncthing purpose should be explained better, probably something along the lines similar to dropbox many separate sync folders many computers to many computers syncing. Personal storage, no data in the cloud
ferongr 10y ago
Hopefully some day an implementation in something other than Go will emerge. The current Go implementation is mind-numbingly slow and uses huge amounts of memory.
- ycmbntrthrwaway 10y ago
  I think it is unlikely because major part of it is not protocol implementation, but peer discovery and things like that. Have a look at librevault [1] instead, it is written in C++ [2]. [1] https://librevault.com/ https://librevault.com/ [2] https://github.com/Librevault/librevault https://github.com/Librevault/librevault
ohnoesjmr 10y ago
If you look at the relays page[0], that shows number of users currently using relays, which is 44k atm. [0] http://relays.syncthing.net/ http://relays.syncthing.net/
j3097736 10y ago
It's pretty impressive to see more arm64 than i386
ymhuang0808 10y ago
Thanks the authors and contributors. I use Syncthing for sync my photos on Android with my desktop. It works perfectly.

238 points by GutenYe 10y ago

It amazes me that Syncthing handles rapidly-changing files better for me than Dropbox. Where Dropbox has left different versions of files on different computers even after they have changed multiple times, Syncthing happily synchronizes them without issues. And the fact that Syncthing is open source and allows me to keep files on my own machines is a big plus. However, I would love to see a paid option for easy backup of selected files to a machine in the cloud. Some people want their files backed up and accessible through a web service and I wish I could recommend Syncthing to them as well.

XorNot 10y ago
Does syncthing have a backup option? Last I recall it didn't, which kind of soured me on it - in an ideal world every sync operation would be prefaced with "send a backup to one of my backup endpoints first".
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- noja 10y ago
  Depends on your use case. You can configure it to keep versions of files: https://docs.syncthing.net/users/versioning.html https://docs.syncthing.net/users/versioning.html (But Syncthing is intended for file syncing, not backup.)
- SunSparc 10y ago
  Backing up your filesystem can and really should be part of an entirely different process. Let syncthing focus on syncing. Get CrashPlan, rsync, or some other process going on your filesystem for backups. Unless you are hoping for backing up every single version of your documents.
- bedros 10y ago
  check out borg backup, it's my favorite backup tool
  - ptman 10y ago
    https://www.stavros.io/posts/holy-grail-backups/ https://www.stavros.io/posts/holy-grail-backups/
jamwt 10y ago
Just a heads up: that almost certainly means SyncThing is failing to recognize some classes of conflicts and concurrency races, and is destroying some changes. Doing this right is a hard problem. I know they can be a pain to deal with, but we don't spin out conflicts for no reason! Disclosure: I work on the Dropbox sync engine.
- growse 10y ago
  Do you have any specific bug or design reference to the Syncthing codebase that illustrates this, or do you simply believe that it's impossible to do it faster than Dropbox does it? Fwiw, i frequently get notifications from Syncthing that it's found a conflict it can't resolve and asks me to resolve manually.
  - jamwt 10y ago
    Sorry, not super familiar with Syncthing. It's definitely not impossible to do better than Dropbox, but to some degree, as in all things, it's a function of engineering resources, telemetry, and usage. We've likely put 25-100x more resources into solving this problem over the last 10 years, and we just have a lot more data b/c we have 100s of millions of users on lots of platforms using Dropbox with every application you can imagine. So we're able to tease out the "long tail" of weird file system and application behavior in a way that's very difficult for smaller projects. Truly durable conflict management in the face of arbitrary mutations by user applications on the filesystem ends up being a really, really hard problem to cover exhaustively. The Dropbox client handles literally hundreds of special cases. So, yeah, I believe it is (in general) safe to assume that Dropbox is probably doing A-more-correct-thing for a complicated (and admittedly confusing) reason when it comes to sync behavior. But we're not perfect--we do still find surprises from time to time, so feel free to contact support if you see something that looks wrong!
- amelius 10y ago
  Are you saying that you solve conflicts specifically for different types of applications (e.g., Word, Photoshop, Excel)? That's impressive. However, now I'm wondering how I get my own apps supported.

baldfat 10y ago

I would love to use Synchthing but Bit Torrent Sync, now known as Resilio Sync, works behind firewalls so much better. Hope to one day come back to syncthing.

noja 10y ago
Syncthing works fine behind and through firewalls. Which year did you last use it?
- baldfat 10y ago
  Last year. I am in different Public School networks and SyncThing still got caught. I worked for hours to figure it out and just couldn't :( Did they beef it up since last year?
  - noja 10y ago
    There are public relays which you can use (automatically unless you disable the feature), so NATing and firewalls shouldn't be an issue.
    - pricechild 10y ago
      I think they're upset that the Network Administrator is blocking the system intentionally, not that it didn't make it through in the first place. Don't upset your Network Administrators!
      - baldfat 10y ago
        Well I am in about 10 different school districts and they all have different policies. I just won't do anything that won't work as a default so I can claim ignorance.

okket 10y ago

And it looks like two of the last really big tipping stones are being addressed: 1) Advanced NAT traversal via UDP, which is is less efficient than TCP, but orders of magnitude better than relying on relays. More about this here: https://kastelo.net/2017/03/08/syncthing-kcp.html https://kastelo.net/2017/03/08/syncthing-kcp.html 2) Internal filesystem notification watch facility for near realtime sync (currently possible via an external service -> syncthing-inotify). For more see pull request https://github.com/syncthing/syncthing/pull/3986 https://github.com/syncthing/syncthing/pull/3986 The future looks bright! Addendum: Have a look at the community forum https://forum.syncthing.net https://forum.syncthing.net

mouldysammich 10y ago

syncthing honestly is one of the best pieces of software i use. It manages a fairly often changing music library, a lossy copy of it, and my phones photos really handily all on a raspberry pi 1. One of my favourite programs i use daily.

thewhitetulip 10y ago

I have been a happy user of syncthing, it is brilliant Piece of software, I no longer have to run around looking for data cable, I just open my laptop, and it syncs the complete file system!

jepper 10y ago

Brilliant piece of software. Perfect to gather data from different devices to backup in the cloud or to sync documents or a massive music collection. The only thing missing is an encrypted external sync node so I can put it on a VPS somewhere

nisa 10y ago
There are tools like gocryptfs or cryfs that solve that problem to a degree. cryfs even makes the directory structure and file names opaque with chunking the encrypted data in small blocks but this turns quickly into a benchmark of your sync software (i.e. don't use it with Nextcloud, the client can't cope well and fast with lot's of small files at least for the initial sync). Not sure if syncthing is better. Didn't came around to testing gocryptfs, but if you don't need the chunking it looks like the better alternative. https://nuetzlich.net/gocryptfs/comparison/ https://nuetzlich.net/gocryptfs/comparison/ https://www.cryfs.org/comparison https://www.cryfs.org/comparison
sinatra 10y ago
This is the blocker for me too. Support for a zero knowledge server where even if someone gets access to the filesystem on the server, they can only see it encrypted. Other than that, Syncthing is absolutely amazing!
- qznc 10y ago
  I would like to mix it. Then my desktop could be a mirror for my friend without knowing his files and vice versa.
  - keksberg 10y ago
    Is there any other solution that is capable of exactly that?
    - brtw 10y ago
      Crash plan does something like that for backup

aerique 10y ago

This goes against one of the points of Syncthing (but I'm more interested in its other features): are there any good 3rd-party hosts so I don't have the hassle of maintaining on myself?

mouldysammich 10y ago
It's paid but seedboxes sometimes support syncthing. Seedhost.eu i know for example supports it.
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fiatjaf 10y ago

Since no one is complaining: I find Syncthing too complicated to set up. You must create a folder, then get a number for a computer (which you end up writing in a pastepad or something like that because the two computers don't communicate), then go to the other computer and place the number in, then do the same for the second computer to the first. Repeat it for 5 or 6 machines. If any machine is switched what do you do? Start over again establishing the link with all other machines.

fiatjaf 10y ago
I came to wander if there was market demand for some kind of "Syncthing Admin" that would centralize this process for corporative users, and provide other kinds of features (commands from "Syncthing Admin" could be transmitted through Syncthing itself!).
meonkeys 10y ago
I think the "introducer" feature is supposed to simplify this process, but I don't understand it.
- okket 10y ago
  Once you established a connection to the 'introducer', it will introduce your device to all other devices it knows and vice versa. You still need to authorise these introductions on the devices, but no typing/copying of crypto strings.
  - deleted 10y ago
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okket 10y ago
This is the price you have to pay for a (secure) decentralised system, but syncthing tries to help where it can. E.g. you can set a syncthing instance as an 'introducer', so you only have to establish a connection to this device to get offered connections to all others devices. You still need to authorise these introductions on the devices, but you do not need to type in the crypto verification strings.

odabaxok 10y ago

Can anyone share their experiences with Syncthing compared to Resilio Sync (aka Bit Torrent Sync)? I am using Resilio Sync since its beta version, but they have added a lot of restrictions since then and made some functions only available for paying users. I am concerned about ease of use (setup and everyday usage) on Windows and Android.

mouldysammich 10y ago
I used syncthing when it first came out on windows and it was very easy to set up so i can only assume its improved since then, and the android app is quite good. it has a large number of settings and you can make it only run when you're charging so you dong use all your batter.
- odabaxok 10y ago
  Thanks for the reply. In the meantime, I have checked Syncthing forums and I have found this topic: https://forum.syncthing.net/t/why-im-moving-back-to-btsync-resilio/8891 https://forum.syncthing.net/t/why-im-moving-back-to-btsync-r... It is exactly complaining about the ease of use on Windows and Android, saying there is no native GUI, etc. From this description it seems, that Syncthing is not there, yet.
  - mouldysammich 10y ago
    There isnt a native gui, in that its in the browser but that isnt really a problem i would have said. it allows the developers to focus on a cross-platform good backend and have a crossplatform frontend without the issues that come with having that.
vocatus_gate 10y ago
Oh boy can I ever. We used Resilio Sync (aka Bittorrent Sync aka BT Sync) for a while for the Tron project ( https://reddit.com/r/TronScript https://reddit.com/r/TronScript ). It worked great for our use-case: distributing a large number of files to a large number of nodes who required read-only access. Anytime I changed a file on the master node it would blast out to everyone else while simultaneously preventing any other node in the swarm from propagating changes. Unfortunately with all the restrictions they introduced, it stopped working reliably. Internally they introduced a hard-coded peer cap of something like 32, while our swarm was already over 500. We switched to Syncthing and it's been working well. There is still one major issue and that's that anyone can mark their copy of the folder as "read-only" (formerly called "Master"), and then they will attempt to propagate changes out to the rest of the swarm. So, there's that. But strictly on a distributed file syncing level, it works great.

vocatus_gate 10y ago

As a heavy user of Syncthing for the Tron project ( https://reddit.com/r/TronScript https://reddit.com/r/TronScript ) I'm excited to see how well Syncthing is doing, and really appreciate the hard work from the devs. We spun up a Syncthing node to distribute the project after Resilio Sync (formerly "BT Sync") put a hard cap on the number of nodes that were allowed to connect. Keep up the great work, team!

josephb 10y ago
For those with some spare CPU cycles and bandwidth you can give back to the project by running a relay server. https://docs.syncthing.net/users/strelaysrv.html https://docs.syncthing.net/users/strelaysrv.html Eg that VM running a DNS adblocker, from another front page article :)
- pricechild 10y ago
  What's the drive or motivation behind people running syncthing discovery & relay servers? Do they generally then run their own clients to only use their own servers? With Tor I'm convinced over the "speech should be free, I'm making the world a better place" type argument. With syncthing I'm incredibly impressed that this optional (but incredibly useful) infrastructure is being run by people for free since it doesn't quite make the world a better place in the same way? It just saves a bunch of other people setting up their own relay/discovery server on a cheap linode/aws instance? Impressed!
  - Nutomic 10y ago
    I think people just want to help others, and do something useful with their spare resources. I run a relay on a server on my home internet connection, so it doesn't cost me anything.
    - 2bluesc 10y ago
      > I think people just want to help others, and do something useful with their spare resources. I run a relay on a server on my home internet connection, so it doesn't cost me anything. Same. The devs the contribute their time to build syncthing, the least I can do to help their (our?) cause is to spend 10-60 minutes to setup a relay and spend 5 minutes to babysit it every other month.

pedrocr 10y ago

Has anyone been able to sync large folders with syncthing? Last time I tried when syncing 500GB you'd end up using >500MB of memory which made it unusable for home NAS setups. Hopefully it has since improved?

noja 10y ago
Are you running an official build? This page indicates that your usage should be around 80 megs (with the gui closed): https://forum.syncthing.net/t/huge-ram-usage-2gb-on-synology-ds1513/8845/9 https://forum.syncthing.net/t/huge-ram-usage-2gb-on-synology... and that an unofficial NAS-specific build had a problem with high ram usage.
- pedrocr 10y ago
  I always ran official builds, my NAS are just standard x86 servers. Last time I checked was January 2015: https://github.com/syncthing/syncthing/issues/468#issuecomment-70808104 https://github.com/syncthing/syncthing/issues/468#issuecomme... Since that bug was closed with no solution I'm not too hopeful but maybe I should try it again.
  - Nutomic 10y ago
    If you can reproduce the issue, be sure to post on the forum so we can figure out the cause.
    - pedrocr 10y ago
      See the bug report at the time. It was closed without being fixed and it was 100% reproducible. Maybe it's fixed now but no one was too worried about it then and I saw similar reports on the forums for a while before I lost interest. I should either try syncthing again or finally test infinit completely. This is the last piece of the puzzle I'm missing to have a fully workable personal data management solution that allows me to bring up a completely new laptop with my full config and data with just a clean Ubuntu install and a few commands.

problems 10y ago

Interesting that the mobile usage seems to be so low from this, I sync my desktop, NAS and phone using Syncthing constantly. I also reject any sort of statistics though, so I'm probably not helping.

swiley 10y ago
I've run both the mobile and desktop version on my phone and it just drains the battery way too fast. I ended up just using an rsync cron job to sync my phone over ssh while everything else uses syncthing (and yes, I know this means I can't delete anything but I very rarely do anyway.)
- problems 10y ago
  You can set it to sync only on wifi and/or only when charging, which has always done the job for me. Depends on your use case, but things like password DBs need to be update-able from both directions, which rsync doesn't really do. On the other hand, I can rely on the fact that I don't need my home to be sync'd up unless I'm actually at home, on wifi.
Nutomic 10y ago
The Android version targets Linux (due to some issues with Golang), which means it doesn't show up in the Android section. Actual usage reporting data for Android is ~2800 devices or ~11.7%.

darrmit 10y ago

Syncthing is awesome. It is more difficult to setup than something like Dropbox (though, scanning QR codes is pretty easy IMO), but that has gotten exponentially better over the last year or so via the community and it seems to only be getting better.

gravypod 10y ago

Is there something like Syncthing that works like a RAID system? I'd like to use multiple computers in different locations and use them to backup and expand my storage size. Basically redundant but distributed storage with N node fail tolerance. Preferably interfaceable via a "/mnt/cloud" directory so I can use it from my laptop and easily write backup scripts and store data into it. If this existed I'd have something big to work on setting up next week.

zurn 10y ago
Syncthing does redundancy by default, no? Just add a node. But RAID and Syncthing aren't substitutes for backups, for the same reason: no restore if your data get hosed.
- gravypod 10y ago
  I don't really want syncing. I want a distrabution of the blocks of the filesystem that allows for redundant storage & expansion of storage space. RW times would be slower but storage would be bigger and more redundant.
  - onli 10y ago
    Is it possible you look for something like Ceph? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ceph_(software) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ceph_(software)
    - gravypod 10y ago
      That seems to be focused on throughput. I'm focused on how much data I can store into the system and if it's redundant so long as N nodes don't die (and if they do I'd like it to attempt to reorganize the network so they system keeps working with N node failure).
      - jabl 10y ago
        Tahoe-LAFS ( https://tahoe-lafs.org/trac/tahoe-lafs https://tahoe-lafs.org/trac/tahoe-lafs ) then?

therealmarv 10y ago

I loved the concept and hated the battery consumption on Android devices. Well it works totally different than a normal cloud storage so there is nobody really to blame but I cannot afford that much battery on my small 5" phone. Also did not liked that dates are not correctly on Android (but again this is not Syncthing fault). Why we cannot have date correction on external storage (without root) like on desktop file systems on Android? :(

mduerksen 10y ago

Syncthing is sorely missing iOS support. I know they have their reasons not to implement it[0], but I feel that feature might be worth the hassle. Photo sync on iOS without iCloud is a huge pain atm. My backup strategy involves a NAS folder that stays up to date (i.e. also deletes photos that I delete on my phone), and which I occasionally sort into final location. After that I can free the space on my phone. All other options (including Resilio Sync) are a add-only "sync"[1], which makes it annoying to sift through all the photos including those I already weeded out a week ago. [0] https://docs.syncthing.net/users/faq.html#why-is-there-no-ios-client https://docs.syncthing.net/users/faq.html#why-is-there-no-io... [1] In theory, Resilio has a real sync, but for some reason, not for the iOS camera roll.

Nutomic 10y ago
Syncthing is entirely made by volunteers, and so far no one has had the time or interest to work on an iOS app. If you (or someone else) wants to work on an iOS app, that would definitely appreciated.
merpnderp 10y ago
To avoid lock-in with Apple, I tried Amazon Drive for photos. It has worked perfectly for backing up media to their cloud storage. So now I keep my photos in two places.
freehunter 10y ago
I actually use OneDrive and it automatically syncs my camera roll from iOS. I use both iCloud and OneDrive and they've both worked basically the same since the day I started using it.

Nutomic 10y ago

Note that usage reporting is disabled by default, and has to be enabled manually. The Android app alone has around 30.000 active installs according to Google Play statistics. Usage reporting only shows about 2.000 of those. Based on this data, I would estimate that there are between 100.000 and 300.000 active installations of Syncthing. Source: I'm the maintainer of the Syncthing Android app.

voltagex_ 10y ago
Thanks for your work. Is there any way to get additional information about why a phone and a desktop client on the same LAN can't see each other? (or take 10+ minutes to sync?)
- canton7 10y ago
  Post on the forum (https://forum.syncthing.net https://forum.syncthing.net) -- that's where you'll get the best level of support.

canton7 10y ago

One of the common complaints about Syncthing is the lack of native UI (you use your web browser), and the difficulty in setting it up for non-technical users (copying an executable into a directory, running it directly, setting it to automatically start on login aren't something you'd ask your parents / grandparents to do). The homepage recommends Syncnthing-GTK (https://github.com/syncthing/syncthing-gtk https://github.com/syncthing/syncthing-gtk) (Cross-Platform) and SyncTrayzor (https://github.com/canton7/SyncTrayzor https://github.com/canton7/SyncTrayzor) (Windows only) to help with these pain points. The provide installers, more native-feeling UIs, tray icons, etc. There are also a large number of other Community Contributions (https://docs.syncthing.net/users/contrib.html https://docs.syncthing.net/users/contrib.html).

robinson-wall 10y ago

Interesting drop in the numbers when version 0.12 was released. Does anyone know what that was about?

Nutomic 10y ago
Iirc there were some changes to usage reporting (additional data reported), so users were prompted to enable usage reporting again.
CyberShadow 10y ago
IIRC it was due to the new version having a protocol incompatibility with the old version, which means that users needed to upgrade SyncThing on all of their devices simultaneously to keep using it. I can certainly see how that could be a hassle especially when SyncThing is installed via a package manager or in the case of the Android app, where different sources provide different versions.

phaemon 10y ago

This looks pretty cool, and I'll definitely look at it as a Dropbox replacement. On the negative side, your stats page doesn't have a link back to your main page, so you won't even know how many folk had a look based on this HN post. It's a good idea to ensure that all your pages have a link back to your main page.

canton7 10y ago
Yeah that page which was linked to isn't really part of the website: it's a separate site entirely, which is a frontend to the data-collection service. People aren't really supposed to link to it directly as a means of introducing new people to Syncthing...
- phaemon 10y ago
  Indeed, but you never know what page someone might submit to a site like HN, so it's usually a good idea to have a link back to your main site on all pages. For example, they could like to your Forum page (which doesn't have a link to your main page). Or to your Github page (which has a link to the Forum, but not to the main page). Or your Docs page (which...well, you get the idea). Sites that have witty and inventive 404 pages sometimes get those publicised. You really never know what someone will choose to submit.
Proven 10y ago
Why wouldn't they know? Check all IPs that visited both the linked and home page and you'll know.

sneak 10y ago

I had to stop using syncthing on my MacBook and MacBook Air because it was using far too much ram/cpu. I wish it could be made more efficient somehow.

Nutomic 10y ago
You could give sync thing minority a try: https://github.com/syncthing/syncthing-inotify https://github.com/syncthing/syncthing-inotify

interfixus 10y ago

Nicely, nicely crafted software, and getting better by each bump. I have been running it like forever between various Android devices, day to day PC, backup server, and whichever relevant devices have been passing through the household. Just works, can't recommend it enough. The GTK gui is a handy extra.

Nux 10y ago

I'm using Syncthing to distribute files in a web cluster of a few servers instead of using shared storage - thus avoiding the spof. Works quite well, with a few gotchas (ie make sure you don't sync cache files, session files etc). Good software!

jcoffland 10y ago

I have one suggestion for the authors. Make it clear on the front page exactly what Syncthing does. There's lots of information about Syncthing's qualities but if you don't already know what the software does, it's not obvious.

adrianratnapala 10y ago
Hear Ye! But the same suggestion could be made about almost any product with a web-site these days. Indeed Syncthing is doing much better than most; they have a box at the top of the page with a one-sentence explanation/plug.
- bedros 10y ago
  happy syncthing user here; I agree with comment above, syncthing purpose should be explained better, probably something along the lines similar to dropbox many separate sync folders many computers to many computers syncing. Personal storage, no data in the cloud

ferongr 10y ago

Hopefully some day an implementation in something other than Go will emerge. The current Go implementation is mind-numbingly slow and uses huge amounts of memory.

ycmbntrthrwaway 10y ago
I think it is unlikely because major part of it is not protocol implementation, but peer discovery and things like that. Have a look at librevault [1] instead, it is written in C++ [2]. [1] https://librevault.com/ https://librevault.com/ [2] https://github.com/Librevault/librevault https://github.com/Librevault/librevault

ohnoesjmr 10y ago

If you look at the relays page[0], that shows number of users currently using relays, which is 44k atm. [0] http://relays.syncthing.net/ http://relays.syncthing.net/

j3097736 10y ago

It's pretty impressive to see more arm64 than i386

ymhuang0808 10y ago

Thanks the authors and contributors. I use Syncthing for sync my photos on Android with my desktop. It works perfectly.