12 ms·

Open Source Continuous File Synchronization

444 points by quyleanh 5y ago

stuaxo 5y ago
I like it, but have no idea why it is so slow. I was syncing files on 3 laptops on the same WIFI and the speed was just abysmal. That was about 2 or 3 years ago so maybe it's better now.
- karlicoss 5y ago
  It's been working very well for me, I completely replaced Dropbox, and on the VPS/phones [0] as well. The only slow bit I know of is when it's initially syncing too many files (e.g. tens of thousands). Even if they are tiny, it takes a while. I suspect it has something to do with the index serialization, but also there is a maxConcurrentWrites setting which is 2 by default -- perhaps on an SSD this is an unreasonably low default? Not sure. Is it possible that you didn't have inotify enabled (fsWatcherEnabled)? There is also fsWatcherDelayS [0] setting (10 by default), which groups changes to avoid excessive sync operations, so it might be percieved as latency. [0] https://github.com/Catfriend1/syncthing-android#readme https://github.com/Catfriend1/syncthing-android#readme -- I recommend the 'fork' over the original app, it's got some nice extras. Although seems that Google doesn't want it on play store https://github.com/Catfriend1/syncthing-android/issues/704 https://github.com/Catfriend1/syncthing-android/issues/704 [1] https://docs.syncthing.net/users/config.html#fswatcherdelays https://docs.syncthing.net/users/config.html#fswatcherdelays
- qbasic_forever 5y ago
  Three laptops on the same wifi router all talking to each other at once can be very problematic, especially if it's an inexpensive consumer router with one radio. Only one device can shout into the wifi ether at once and the protocol has backoffs to make sure multiple devices don't clobber each other by talking at the same time. Add on top of that other backoff strategies in higher level protocols like in TCP and you can have abysmally slow connections for anything.
- mkl 5y ago
  I set up Syncthing for my dad a few weeks ago, between his PC and his laptop. At first the sync was incredibly slow, and it turned out Windows on both machines though the local network was a public one, so they weren't talking directly to each other but through a relay out on the internet. I fixed that and it got 15-20 times faster. Maybe you have the same problem?
- e3bc54b2 5y ago
  IME this very much depends on router and devices. When I was syncing over mobile hotspot (LAN) on 2.4GHz, speeds weren't impressive. But then I got a 5GHz router with 3 devices and there is sufficient bandwidth. I share ~120GB of total data, spread across ~20 directories, largest being WhatsApp media backup with thousands of crappy low-quality photos. If I wait over a week, I easily accumulate more than a GB of data and it syncs in few minutes at most. Absolutely robust, and zero friction.
1over137 5y ago
"Works on Mac OS X, Windows, Linux, FreeBSD, Solaris and OpenBSD." But notably missing: iOS.
- jchw 5y ago
  It is for syncing files, not transferring or serving them. I don’t think it’s really possible to make an iOS app for Syncthing. It’s not like there’s a Dropbox client for iOS that does actual folder sync. If you are looking to fully replace Dropbox, you need a server to serve files off of that you can access from the Internet. You could do this using a NAS running Syncthing for example. (There’s at least a couple different ways to get it working on a Synology NAS.) That way, you could have a CIFS or WebDAV share to actually browse from mobile devices.
  - frosted-flakes 5y ago
    It works great on Android. It's completely replaced my use of Google Photos and OneDrive (except for the rare use of sharing photos), and I keep local copies of everything. Phones these days have oodles of storage, so why not? (my phone has 256 GB internal storage, plus a microSD card slot which can more than double that).
  - OneLeggedCat 5y ago
    No one seems to know about it, but there is now a 3rd party app: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/m%C3%B6bius-sync/id1539203216 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/m%C3%B6bius-sync/id1539203216 The developer made it with a little help from the syncthing team. There are comments there: https://forum.syncthing.net/t/mobius-sync-ios-client-now-in-beta/15846 https://forum.syncthing.net/t/mobius-sync-ios-client-now-in-... I've been using it for some months, and it works fine, when it works. I sometimes have to start it manually because iOS killed it in the background.
    - darkwater 5y ago
      Can you sync automatically photos/videos taken from the camera? That's my #1 for Syncthing on Android
juskrey 5y ago
After testing for a while, moved to commercial Resilio Sync (they offer one-time payment lifetime licenses for personal/family use). More tightly integrated, much faster, lighter and polished app overall, has good iOS client.
srijan4 5y ago
I've been using syncthing for more than 3 years, and it's been just amazing. It replaced dropbox for me completely, and provides a better experience in all aspects - speed, stability, low power usage on mobile. One of the few projects I'm sponsoring on Github.
- cowmix 5y ago
  Ditto. Sometimes I get some CPU spikes but overall it has been amazing.
- 6ak74rfy 5y ago
  Syncthing is more of a synchronization tool and less of a backup tool. For e.g., if I screwed up a file on one machine, that will automatically be replicated to other machines. Dropbox, on the other hand, "can" be used as a backup tool because I can go and recover an older version if I want. I do know that Syncthing has a way to keep older file versions around for awhile but I find that a bit cumbersome to use, especially during restore. So, I am curious to understand more on how you use Syncthing as a replacement to Dropbox. (I'd love to do the same but don't for reasons I wrote above.)
  - js8 5y ago
    I don't see why should Syncthing be a complete replacement for Dropbox (Unix principles blah blah blah). It's probably not hard to set up a periodic backup (for example, Borg) on one of the replicated machines. At home, I replicate everything on my phone and netbook to a (bigger) desktop machine, so I could just add a periodic backup job there.
  - Macha 5y ago
    Turn on staggered file versioning. If you need to go back to an older version, pick it in .stversions . If anything, this seems simpler than dropbox for me. Does Dropbox still make you use the web UI to restore old versions?
    - kuroguro 5y ago
gnufied 5y ago
I love syncthing, but one thing which I think it does not quite do right is - on my Windows desktop each time desktop is resumed from sleep or reboot, it performs full sync by scanning everything. It takes all the CPU for awhile until syncthing settles down. I am not sure if this problem is Windows specific though.
- karlicoss 5y ago
  There is a restartOnWakeup which is true by default, seems like it's the one? There is also a setLowPriority setting which I believe should prevent it from taking all CPU, but not sure since never had such problem on Linux. https://docs.syncthing.net/users/config.html https://docs.syncthing.net/users/config.html
  - ComputerGuru 5y ago
    Low priority stops it from consuming all cpu when there is contention for the cpu, but not when the pc is otherwise idle.
    - TuringTest 5y ago
      If the PC is otherwise idle, why is it a problem that a process takes all CPU if it needs it?
      - ComputerGuru 5y ago
        Battery consumption, fan noise, heat, etc.
      - TeMPOraL 5y ago
        'gnufied mentioned a Windows desktop so the biggest problem would be noise, but what about portable Windows devices? My secondary computer is a Windows 2-in-1. It's frequently running on battery power, and during that time, I often wake it up, check something, and put it back to sleep - all in a minute or less, repeated a dozen times an hour. If each time I turn the screen on Syncthing is going to run at full throttle for a minute or more, it'll drastically cut the effective work-on-battery time. (This article popping up on HN reminded me that I wanted to check Syncthing out. But what 'gnufied described is a total deal breaker for me, so I'm not going to bother for now.)
frosted-flakes 5y ago
I love Syncthing. I have abysmally slow home internet, so any cloud storage service simply takes too long to sync, and trying to do the first sync of 150 GB takes many weeks. Besides, none of these services (dropbox, onedrive) support ignore files, so they're constantly syncing node_modules folders, etc. Instead, I have Syncthing set to sync a half-dozen folders (Pictures, desktop, documents, audiobooks, etc.) between my phone, laptop, and desktop over the local network. In total, I sync more than 150 GB of files and it works almost instantly and seamlessly. I use the SyncTrayzor GUI for Windows and the Syncthing app for Android. The Android app occasionally needs to be restarted manually, but that's the only problem I've had with it. Importantly, I keep local copies of everything on all of my devices, including my phone (256 GB storage plus a microSD card slot which I have yet to need). Lack of support for Syncthing on iPhones is one major reason I stick with Android, even though there's a lot to like about the platform. Once it gets too big I'll move a bunch of old stuff to backup/archive drives, but I don't expect that to happen for a while. Now, I use Google Photos to selectively share photos with others, and that's it.
- relyks 5y ago
  Dropbox has the ability to ignore files/folders: https://help.dropbox.com/files-folders/restore-delete/ignored-files https://help.dropbox.com/files-folders/restore-delete/ignore... It's not exactly the most user-friendly method, and you have to run a script to do that consistently for generated files/folders like those from npm
  - frosted-flakes 5y ago
    That sounds quite cumbersome and inflexible. Why can't they just have a .dropboxignore file? Even so, Dropbox/OneDrive have other problems, such as only syncing a single folder and not syncing over the local network. Plus it's expensive.
    - rrdharan 5y ago
      Dropbox syncs over the local network.
claytongulick 5y ago
For anyone interested in doing this programmatically in javascript, I wrote bit-sync [1], a js implementationof rsync. It's transport agnostic, so WebRTC or websockets or whatever is fine. Works in browser or Node. https://github.com/claytongulick/bit-sync https://github.com/claytongulick/bit-sync
Multicomp 5y ago
The recently release 1.16.1 supports the first beta of untrusted nodes, aka nodes that will sync data but don't know what it is, as it is encrypted with a passphrase you set. so drop off an old machine at your parents / buddies / exs house, give it internet connection and cron some updates + reboots + power on after an outage and boom, if your house and all your devices burn down, you can get your files via decrypting with that password you saved to your email / password manager. I love Syncthing and it's replaced Dropbox and Microsoft 365 for me. ok i keep the latter for online dictation when I'm not near a pc with dragon installed on it, but still, I don't need to trust MS with my data in their cloud.
- pokive 5y ago
  > give it internet connection and cron some updates + reboots + power on after an outage and boom wtf does this even mean?
  - tapland 5y ago
    Cron jobs are time scheduled tasks. So schedule auto updating, automatic restart and login so that it always get back to syncing so that you don't have to actively maintain anything.
    - pokive 5y ago
      Thanks for explaining
- kuroguro 5y ago
  They finally released it? Been waiting for this! Gonna hook it up to one of my VPSes.
- Bilal_io 5y ago
  Ex's house? I'll go do that.
- remram 5y ago
  Reminder that sync is not backup. If you delete a file, all your other copies will happily delete it too, giving you no way to recover.
orena 5y ago
Amazing software, great development team. First I replaced Dropbox with resilio and a year ago replaced resilio with synchthing
rcthompson 5y ago
The best thing I can say about Syncthing is that after having set it up, I almost never have to think about it. It just works, and my files are always where I need them to be.
asicsp 5y ago
From https://tonsky.me/blog/syncthing/ https://tonsky.me/blog/syncthing/: >It’s amazing how great computer products can be when they don’t need to deal with corporate bullshit, don’t have to promote a brand or to sell its users.
- mikevm 5y ago
  It's also an unsustainable business model
  - JetSpiegel 5y ago
    Rocking 463 releases so far. On the long term, we are all dead.
em-bee 5y ago
i love syncthing. but it is difficult to make backups from my phone where i need the ability to delete files that take up to much space, but that i want to keep on the backup. there is a function to ignore deletes, but it is hidden in the advanced settings which are difficult to access (some of those advanced settings should be hidden, but ignore delete is not one of them i think) another thing i miss is an easy ability to see if all files have been sent. currently the status only shows if all files from the remote device are received, but i care more if all local files are sent (and thus backed up)
- thunderbong 5y ago
  When you set up a folder to sync, you can choose the 'Folder Type' under the 'Advanced' tab. This sets up that folder to do bi-directional sync or not.
  - em-bee 5y ago
    that does not matter, backup should sync files from the phone to the backup-device. it should not sync deletes from the phone to the backup-device. but uni-directional still syncs both, only ignoring delete on the backup-device prevents syncing deletes. the point is that it's complicated and the 'ignore delete' is easily missed. also because it is not shown in the status. so every time i have to wonder, did i set this up correctly? and i have to check the status on both the phone and the backup-device to make sure all is right. when i want to delete something on the phone i have to check on the backup-device to make sure that the file is backed up. because the phones status does not tell me that. it only tells me whether it downloaded everything from other devices which is less usefull, i can see which files are on the phone anyways. i can't see what's been uploaded to the backup-device unless i go look. just the other day i realized that for a new folder i had not set up ignore-delete. luckily, because i am paranoid, i made a hard-link duplicate of the backup before starting to delete files on the phone.
    - seniorivn 5y ago
      there is an alternative way, make the sync regular bidirectional but on server have a Cron job that archives(moves to a different directory) backup files that are no longer needed on local devices
lamontcg 5y ago
I used Resilio fairly unhappily for years and their Mac client would incessantly lock up and they've never fixed it. Switched to Syncthing something like 2 years ago and it has been solid for me across Mac and Linux so far. And I do moderately crazy things like using it to sync git repos to create replicas across multiple machines instead of manually using git across 5 machines and a hundred or so repos. Only complaint is that initial synchronization is really slow.
- diarrhea 5y ago
  > And I do moderately crazy things like using it to sync git repos to create replicas across multiple machines instead of manually using git across 5 machines and a hundred or so repos. You could set up your own git remote for this, Gitea is all the rage I've heard. But git remotes can be implemented many ways, no need for a dedicated server running.
  - karlicoss 5y ago
    It's much easier in syncthing, you don't have to remember to commit/push etc. Works really well as long as you don't change the repos too often so index conflicts don't happen (but even if they do, worst case you just lose index state)
  - lamontcg 5y ago
    I push everything to remotes as well, either GitHub, GitLab or just over ssh to a private server.
aborsy 5y ago
Great product. I only stopped using it because it has no iOS app. It was surprisingly able to punch through firewalls in some cases where Tailscale couldn’t (even though both use UPnP and similar stuff).
- escalt 5y ago
  The cool thing about Syncthing is their public network of community provided relay servers https://relays.syncthing.net/ https://relays.syncthing.net/ When two devices can't find each other on the local network they look for each other on public discovery servers and then pick a community provided relay to connect. The data is end-to-end encrypted between both devices, so the relay doesn't see the file contents. This works out of the box on almost all networks. Unfortunately IPv6 doesn't seem to work with their public relay network though...
  - 1vuio0pswjnm7 5y ago
    Once the devices have discovered each other is it necessary for the traffic to pass through syncthing servers. Once each end has discovered the address:port of the other, then the devices can connect directly. I use a different peer-to-peer solution, older than syncthing and open source, and it does not send traffic through a supernode by default, it only uses the supernode for discovery.
  - BitPirate 5y ago
    The use case of IPv6 relays isn't that strong to be honest. You don't have to deal with NAT and Syncthing can use UDP hole punching if the firewall doesn't completely block outgoing UDP traffic.
- thefz 5y ago
  > It was surprisingly able to punch through firewalls in some cases It uses external, community-run relays for that.
  - BitPirate 5y ago
    And hole punching
eximius 5y ago
I think my only complaint about syncthing is really a nixos problem where the config keeps getting deleted and my devices disconnect.
podiki 5y ago
Been really liking Syncthing, mostly moved off of Dropbox to it. I've noticed recently that Dropbox is very slow at resyncing when waking from sleep (on Linux, at least), taking easily 5-10 minutes or something much longer before it realizing it is out of sync. On the other hand Syncthing is about as quick as anything once network connection is restored. It is syncing on a local network, but Dropbox used to be as quick, too. Another reason I'm glad I've switched.
elmimmo 5y ago
It does not support [0] (i.e. loses) extended attributes even between systems that share support for them, which in the case of macOS means no support for Finder tags, custom icons, legacy Mac fonts and countless other Mac features, maybe niche to most, but still important to those that make use of them. AFAIK it is not even in the roadmap. [0] https://docs.syncthing.net/users/faq.html#what-things-are-synced https://docs.syncthing.net/users/faq.html#what-things-are-sy...
- Wowfunhappy 5y ago
  I agree this is annoying—but isn't it par for the course? OneDrive does the same thing. Is Dropbox better? The thing that really annoyed me was that SyncThing synced .DS_Store files, leading to tons of unnecessary transfers and conflicts. They could be excluded via ignore patterns, but those patterns needed to be added to every folder—there was no global option. To fix this, I had to edit the code and create my own custom SyncThing build.
  - elmimmo 5y ago
    Dropbox supports xattr transparently and fully AFAIK (Finder icons, Finder comments, Finder tags, legacy Mac fonts… all sync fine from my experience). Resilio Sync says it does partially [0] but IMHO not to an acceptable level (it keeps Finder tags for instance but loses Finder icons and completely cripples legacy Mac Fonts). Note that .DS_Store files are another different thing altogether. They are standard files storing the view state of their parent folder (and, incidentally, Dropbox does not sync them [1] and Resilio Sync is set to not sync them by default). [0] https://help.resilio.com/hc/en-us/articles/204754729-Alt-Streams-and-Xattrs-in-Sync https://help.resilio.com/hc/en-us/articles/204754729-Alt-Str... [1] https://www.dropbox.com/help/145/en https://www.dropbox.com/help/145/en
  - BitPirate 5y ago
    PR for default ignores is in the making: https://github.com/syncthing/syncthing/pull/7530 https://github.com/syncthing/syncthing/pull/7530
rubin55 5y ago
Absolutely LOVE syncthing! User for about 3 years, after I left Dropbox (they incorrectly tagged a shared file as copyright-infringing - it was a bit too invasive for comfort). I sync about 8TiB between 10+ devices, ranging from tablets and TV to desktops and laptops. Since relatively recently, they also solved case (in)sensitive file names, which used to be a pita when changing file name casing only, but that’s all history now. Big fan!
- alpaca128 5y ago
  > they incorrectly tagged a shared file as copyright-infringing - it was a bit too invasive for comfort OneDrive also opens all uploaded pictures and automatically tags them based on the visible content. As long as an online service doesn't offer end-to-end encryption it's a safe bet that they'll read all your files (famously leading to the Google Drive-based DDOS attack scheme[0]). [0] http://chr13.com/2014/03/10/using-google-to-ddos-any-website/ http://chr13.com/2014/03/10/using-google-to-ddos-any-website...
quyleanh 5y ago
The most thing I love Syncthing is its selected folder sync function, which others services don't offer. Other advantages are opensource, privacy, lightweight, fast. Happy with it for months now.
solarkraft 5y ago
I love the idea of Syncthing (p2p, hell yes), but besides wishing for a “streaming”/“on demand” mode (only downloading a file from a node when you need it, basically Syncthing lite but in the official project, eventually evolving into a mixed mode with local and remote files besides each other) it just ... doesn’t work that well for me. Initially it kind of works but doesn’t saturate the network connection, then after a while it just doesn’t do anything anymore. The web interface doesn’t provide much information about what’s happening. I tried it with multiple different devices and know someone who has the same problem. At the same time I know many people it works flawlessly for. Has anyone else had a similar experience?
- TuringTest 5y ago
  I've had the same problem with Syncthing between Android mobile and desktop. Either devices don't see each other, or if I manage to sync one folder it synchronizes once and it never does anything again. I've switched to KDE Connect for manually transferring files from the phone (it can't be scheduled on Windows as far as I'm aware, but at least it works every time).
2Gkashmiri 5y ago
I used bittorent sync right from the day it launched. Then stopped after they moved to paid tier with forced obsolescence of free version features. I was pointed to syncthing and never have had any serious complaints. Good job
Fiahil 5y ago
I'd love to use Syncthing, but they don't have an iOS app for iPad.
- rspoerri 5y ago
  Try möbius sync
  - Fiahil 5y ago
    It's not available in my region
tut-urut-utut 5y ago
I love syncthing. The best sync tool so far. I use it to sync between my phone, laptop and a VM. However, there are some annoying things: - Frequently I get sync conflicts, although I always edit file only on one host. - Sync is not triggered automatically, but based on the schedule interval. If I need synced files immediately, I need to open the control UI and force rescan of files.
- thefz 5y ago
  > Sync is not triggered automatically, but based on the schedule interval Pretty sure there's a "Watch for changes" toggle in the UI.
tok1 5y ago
Absolutely love syncthing, and migrated to it after using Seafile for several years. I also have quite some personal/business experience with iCloud and OneDrive, and syncthing is (mostly) superior. My wishlist for syncthing though, in prioritized order: 1. support for symlinks, to be able to sync files/folders that live outside of syncthing dirs. Some files I’d like to sync are in fixed locations that I cannot or don’t want to change, and Seafile allowed me to simply symlink them into an already synced dir. The counter-argument in GitHub discussions is having to distinguish between syncing symlink destinations vs. the symlink „as symlink“. For my situation that would be overthinking (as I’d never have the second use case) but I understand the hesitation, sadly. 2. provide a smart versioning/rollback solution leveraging ZFS snapshots, as my file server as participating node already creates rolling snapshots 3. (nice to have) mark certain directories as „sparse“, to sync data only when really accessed. Similar to what OneDrive provides
- mikro2nd 5y ago
  I'd respectfully suggest that HN is not the best forum for expressing those wishes, but using Syncthing's issue-tracker and/or fora/mailing lists (whatever form of community/dev discussion they use - haven't looked for it) would be more likely to get a response.
- franknord23 5y ago
  Re 1.: What about using a bind mount?
p0d 5y ago
How do you monitor your syncthing? I am also a fan. It occured to me however if my headless server in the roofspace running syncthing goes away I don't know about it. Is there a way of doing notifications in syncthing which doesn't require an external monitoring system?
- killingtime74 5y ago
  Do you mean like metrics like Prometheus? https://github.com/f100024/syncthing_exporter https://github.com/f100024/syncthing_exporter. The http interface can be exposed on the network.
  - p0d 5y ago
    After posting I realised I was just being lazy. Yes, I need to get some sort of monitoring/graphing system going on. I have used Prometheus etc at work.
thefz 5y ago
Been a user for years, I also run a Discovery and a Relay server on two small VPS. Syncthing is great and has improved a lot over the years. It only hiccups when it detects changes in VeraCrypt containers which are still mounted and thus inaccessible to read.
codeflo 5y ago
It's great that many HNers like Syncthing, but personally, I seriously tried it maybe two years ago and didn't have a great experience. I wanted to sync my personal files between three computers, two desktops and a notebook, which don't always see each other. At first, this worked great. Obviously, there were conflicts when I accidentally edited something in two places without syncing up. What I didn't figure out was how to permanently resolve those. I ran into endless cycles were I had a conflict between two systems, resolved that, but the third one hadn't seen the conflict resolution, which produced another conflict, which I resolved, which the first system hadn't seen yet, ad infinitum. At least, that's what it looked like. Among other errors, files long since deleted on all systems would still show up as conflicts. To be fair, I didn't actually lose any data, and it's very possible I did something wrong that would be obvious to other people. But to me, it wasn't at all clear what and why, which scared me enough to move away from this setup. I don't want to take a lot of chances with my data.
- austincheney 5y ago
  If you would like to help with an alternative I plan to add syncing as a new feature to my networked file system application soon. The application is already cross OS and feature a familiar GUI and fully recursive directory hashing with ignore lists (ignore lists are only available using terminal commands at this time). It seems like synchronization is the next logic step and I could really use feedback and testing from interested users. The application is available at https://github.com/prettydiff/share-file-systems https://github.com/prettydiff/share-file-systems I would love for syncing to occur upon changes in real time as opposed to timed intervals like a cron job.
- Siira 5y ago
  What do you use now?
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- js8 5y ago
  Not really sure if this is required for Syncthing but I would (cautiously) set it up so that there are no cycles between the shares. So if you have 3 machines that you need to sync, designate one as a hub which syncs with the other two, and the other two do not see each other. If you absolutely need to transfer data between two others as well, set up another completely independent share between them (a different directory on both machines). I am not sure but fully automated replication setup with cycles might be impossible due to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CAP_theorem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CAP_theorem. (Addendum: I think actually what is needed is even stronger - you should make sure before editing files that the designated "central hub" node is available and has been synced.)
renonce 5y ago
I wish I don't have to add devices and authorize every folder for each pair of devices manually. I like it but Resilio Sync is just much easier to use.
- Macha 5y ago
  You can set a device as an introducer and it will push its list of devices to the new device.
playpause 5y ago
I really wanted to like Syncthing, but it can’t handle git repos inside it - the moment you commit anything or switch branch, Syncthing irresolvably borks the .git folder on all machines. Dropbox handles git repos inside it perfectly, syncing all uncommitted changes as well as commit/branch state without any issues, ever.
- karlicoss 5y ago
  Hmm, I'm using git in syncthing folders all the time, and it works great -- how does borking manifest?
- grandchild 5y ago
  Interesting, I sync many Git repos, and they all work just fine. I even shared some with other people (to co-author). It all worked splendidly.
  - playpause 5y ago
    Well that is weird. When googling for solutions, all I found was people saying it would never work, and smartass comments about using GitHub instead. So I gave up. Maybe I’ll give it another try. It was a very simple setup though, I don’t know what I could have been doing wrong.
- willemmerson 5y ago
  If only there was some kind of service that could sync git repos properly, some kind of 'hub' that could also deal with conflicts
  - playpause 5y ago
    Yes very good. But GitHub doesn’t magically sync uncommitted working tree state between your computers.
- JohnBerea 5y ago
  My projects folder has a dozen or so git repos in it, and I've been syncing it for over a year without issues. Between two other computers. It doesn't matter which one I push/pull/commit/whatever from, the others mirror the operation.
jeltz 5y ago
Syncthing seems way too manual for my taste. I want something which i can easily provision with Ansible and which does not run a management ui. I want everything to be in config files which can be provisioned. It might be possible to run Syncthing like this but last time I checked it was poorly documented. I have also tried Unison, which is closer to my needs, but it has its own issues like having to be compiled with the same version of Ocaml on all servers.
- mab122 5y ago
  Well, everything is in config file in syncthing. and you can disable ui in that config file. https://docs.syncthing.net/users/config.html https://docs.syncthing.net/users/config.html
- e3bc54b2 5y ago
  I just backup Syncthing config file. I have also read it is possible to configure directories with Nix, but haven't tried that yet.
wazoox 5y ago
Can syncthing scale up to a couple petabytes? So far I'm using rsync, that scales, but is sloooow.
- rpdillon 5y ago
  100th percentile shows about 325TB[0], so while it may be able to and users may be doing that, they don't seem to be reporting statistics publicly. [0]: https://data.syncthing.net/ https://data.syncthing.net/
christiansakai 5y ago
I've been thinking to create a desktop app for family uses. Like, family photo albums, notes, precious documents, and more ambitious projects, maybe passwords? My relatively big families are scattered throughout a few different countries and homes. I am a fullstack web dev so creating web app or electron app is right up my alley, but not in distributed databases or peer to peer stuffs. I was looking at OrbitDB the other day, but I'm curious can it be programmed to just connect peer to peer to my family computers ip addresses? Also, as far as I know, I can't upload blob data to OrbitDB, and has to use IPFS instead. Can this syncthing solves this problem? Or more generally, is there any OSS software that already solves this problem? I'd love to learn how to build it. The whole system doesn't need to be high performance, it is just for family uses.
- rakoo 5y ago
  It sounds like you want Nextcloud (https://nextcloud.com/athome/ https://nextcloud.com/athome/) or cozycloud (https://cozy.io/en/features/ https://cozy.io/en/features/). Both are servers you can self-host, and mobile/desktop apps to make it more integrated.
- rolisz 5y ago
  You might want to check out Tailscale. They create a WireGuard based mesh VPN between all your devices, enabling secure communication between them. So you have one central DB and then all the other devices connect to it.
meonkeys 5y ago
Syncthing's most awesome features are speed, decentralization, security, reliability and easy firewall traversal. I've heard several mentions of it being used in place of services like Dropbox, OneDrive, Drive, Box. For the features above, I agree. What Syncthing is missing is usability for folks that use the proprietary services because they are easy to set up and maintain and share files from. For that I recommend Nextcloud. It is centralized, so perhaps a different use case. But certainly a more complete replacement if you (or people you support) are used to Dropbox. Also, just curious, but why is this on hacker news today? Was there a new announcement or release for Syncthing?
- frosted-flakes 5y ago
  It was mentioned in a comment in another thread yesterday, which may be why.
sir_eliah 5y ago
For anyone interested in simple, zero-configuration alternative for local networks, check dragit [0]. [0] https://github.com/sireliah/dragit https://github.com/sireliah/dragit * Note *: author here
incanus77 5y ago
Another vote for Syncthing here. Been using it about a year on two Macs (and occasionally a FreeBSD server / vintage machine, when I turn it on, for backup). Don’t have to think about it and it keeps about 75GB of data in my ~/Sync up to date without effort. I started trying it last year as part of an effort to reduce my third-party & cloud services & effectively got rid of Dropbox. The one trickier piece of the puzzle for me was mobile device support. I use Documents.app on iPad & iPhone combined with SFTP to my machines. Two versions per machine — LAN IP access or port-forwarded WAN access, depending on where I am. All setup with SSH keys so it’s really just one tap to get into whichever home machine I choose.
kyriakos 5y ago
If you are looking for something to sync files between hosts during development (e.g. sync project files to remote dev host etc) give https://mutagen.io/ https://mutagen.io/ a go. It does more than just file sync but been using it for its sync functionality for the past year with great success.

444 points by quyleanh 5y ago

I like it, but have no idea why it is so slow. I was syncing files on 3 laptops on the same WIFI and the speed was just abysmal. That was about 2 or 3 years ago so maybe it's better now.

karlicoss 5y ago
It's been working very well for me, I completely replaced Dropbox, and on the VPS/phones [0] as well. The only slow bit I know of is when it's initially syncing too many files (e.g. tens of thousands). Even if they are tiny, it takes a while. I suspect it has something to do with the index serialization, but also there is a maxConcurrentWrites setting which is 2 by default -- perhaps on an SSD this is an unreasonably low default? Not sure. Is it possible that you didn't have inotify enabled (fsWatcherEnabled)? There is also fsWatcherDelayS [0] setting (10 by default), which groups changes to avoid excessive sync operations, so it might be percieved as latency. [0] https://github.com/Catfriend1/syncthing-android#readme https://github.com/Catfriend1/syncthing-android#readme -- I recommend the 'fork' over the original app, it's got some nice extras. Although seems that Google doesn't want it on play store https://github.com/Catfriend1/syncthing-android/issues/704 https://github.com/Catfriend1/syncthing-android/issues/704 [1] https://docs.syncthing.net/users/config.html#fswatcherdelays https://docs.syncthing.net/users/config.html#fswatcherdelays
qbasic_forever 5y ago
Three laptops on the same wifi router all talking to each other at once can be very problematic, especially if it's an inexpensive consumer router with one radio. Only one device can shout into the wifi ether at once and the protocol has backoffs to make sure multiple devices don't clobber each other by talking at the same time. Add on top of that other backoff strategies in higher level protocols like in TCP and you can have abysmally slow connections for anything.
mkl 5y ago
I set up Syncthing for my dad a few weeks ago, between his PC and his laptop. At first the sync was incredibly slow, and it turned out Windows on both machines though the local network was a public one, so they weren't talking directly to each other but through a relay out on the internet. I fixed that and it got 15-20 times faster. Maybe you have the same problem?
e3bc54b2 5y ago
IME this very much depends on router and devices. When I was syncing over mobile hotspot (LAN) on 2.4GHz, speeds weren't impressive. But then I got a 5GHz router with 3 devices and there is sufficient bandwidth. I share ~120GB of total data, spread across ~20 directories, largest being WhatsApp media backup with thousands of crappy low-quality photos. If I wait over a week, I easily accumulate more than a GB of data and it syncs in few minutes at most. Absolutely robust, and zero friction.

1over137 5y ago

"Works on Mac OS X, Windows, Linux, FreeBSD, Solaris and OpenBSD." But notably missing: iOS.

jchw 5y ago
It is for syncing files, not transferring or serving them. I don’t think it’s really possible to make an iOS app for Syncthing. It’s not like there’s a Dropbox client for iOS that does actual folder sync. If you are looking to fully replace Dropbox, you need a server to serve files off of that you can access from the Internet. You could do this using a NAS running Syncthing for example. (There’s at least a couple different ways to get it working on a Synology NAS.) That way, you could have a CIFS or WebDAV share to actually browse from mobile devices.
- frosted-flakes 5y ago
  It works great on Android. It's completely replaced my use of Google Photos and OneDrive (except for the rare use of sharing photos), and I keep local copies of everything. Phones these days have oodles of storage, so why not? (my phone has 256 GB internal storage, plus a microSD card slot which can more than double that).
- OneLeggedCat 5y ago
  No one seems to know about it, but there is now a 3rd party app: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/m%C3%B6bius-sync/id1539203216 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/m%C3%B6bius-sync/id1539203216 The developer made it with a little help from the syncthing team. There are comments there: https://forum.syncthing.net/t/mobius-sync-ios-client-now-in-beta/15846 https://forum.syncthing.net/t/mobius-sync-ios-client-now-in-... I've been using it for some months, and it works fine, when it works. I sometimes have to start it manually because iOS killed it in the background.
  - darkwater 5y ago
    Can you sync automatically photos/videos taken from the camera? That's my #1 for Syncthing on Android

juskrey 5y ago

After testing for a while, moved to commercial Resilio Sync (they offer one-time payment lifetime licenses for personal/family use). More tightly integrated, much faster, lighter and polished app overall, has good iOS client.

srijan4 5y ago

I've been using syncthing for more than 3 years, and it's been just amazing. It replaced dropbox for me completely, and provides a better experience in all aspects - speed, stability, low power usage on mobile. One of the few projects I'm sponsoring on Github.

cowmix 5y ago
Ditto. Sometimes I get some CPU spikes but overall it has been amazing.
6ak74rfy 5y ago
Syncthing is more of a synchronization tool and less of a backup tool. For e.g., if I screwed up a file on one machine, that will automatically be replicated to other machines. Dropbox, on the other hand, "can" be used as a backup tool because I can go and recover an older version if I want. I do know that Syncthing has a way to keep older file versions around for awhile but I find that a bit cumbersome to use, especially during restore. So, I am curious to understand more on how you use Syncthing as a replacement to Dropbox. (I'd love to do the same but don't for reasons I wrote above.)
- js8 5y ago
  I don't see why should Syncthing be a complete replacement for Dropbox (Unix principles blah blah blah). It's probably not hard to set up a periodic backup (for example, Borg) on one of the replicated machines. At home, I replicate everything on my phone and netbook to a (bigger) desktop machine, so I could just add a periodic backup job there.
- Macha 5y ago
  Turn on staggered file versioning. If you need to go back to an older version, pick it in .stversions . If anything, this seems simpler than dropbox for me. Does Dropbox still make you use the web UI to restore old versions?
  - kuroguro 5y ago

gnufied 5y ago

I love syncthing, but one thing which I think it does not quite do right is - on my Windows desktop each time desktop is resumed from sleep or reboot, it performs full sync by scanning everything. It takes all the CPU for awhile until syncthing settles down. I am not sure if this problem is Windows specific though.

karlicoss 5y ago
There is a restartOnWakeup which is true by default, seems like it's the one? There is also a setLowPriority setting which I believe should prevent it from taking all CPU, but not sure since never had such problem on Linux. https://docs.syncthing.net/users/config.html https://docs.syncthing.net/users/config.html
- ComputerGuru 5y ago
  Low priority stops it from consuming all cpu when there is contention for the cpu, but not when the pc is otherwise idle.
  - TuringTest 5y ago
    If the PC is otherwise idle, why is it a problem that a process takes all CPU if it needs it?
    - ComputerGuru 5y ago
      Battery consumption, fan noise, heat, etc.
    - TeMPOraL 5y ago
      'gnufied mentioned a Windows desktop so the biggest problem would be noise, but what about portable Windows devices? My secondary computer is a Windows 2-in-1. It's frequently running on battery power, and during that time, I often wake it up, check something, and put it back to sleep - all in a minute or less, repeated a dozen times an hour. If each time I turn the screen on Syncthing is going to run at full throttle for a minute or more, it'll drastically cut the effective work-on-battery time. (This article popping up on HN reminded me that I wanted to check Syncthing out. But what 'gnufied described is a total deal breaker for me, so I'm not going to bother for now.)

frosted-flakes 5y ago

I love Syncthing. I have abysmally slow home internet, so any cloud storage service simply takes too long to sync, and trying to do the first sync of 150 GB takes many weeks. Besides, none of these services (dropbox, onedrive) support ignore files, so they're constantly syncing node_modules folders, etc. Instead, I have Syncthing set to sync a half-dozen folders (Pictures, desktop, documents, audiobooks, etc.) between my phone, laptop, and desktop over the local network. In total, I sync more than 150 GB of files and it works almost instantly and seamlessly. I use the SyncTrayzor GUI for Windows and the Syncthing app for Android. The Android app occasionally needs to be restarted manually, but that's the only problem I've had with it. Importantly, I keep local copies of everything on all of my devices, including my phone (256 GB storage plus a microSD card slot which I have yet to need). Lack of support for Syncthing on iPhones is one major reason I stick with Android, even though there's a lot to like about the platform. Once it gets too big I'll move a bunch of old stuff to backup/archive drives, but I don't expect that to happen for a while. Now, I use Google Photos to selectively share photos with others, and that's it.

relyks 5y ago
Dropbox has the ability to ignore files/folders: https://help.dropbox.com/files-folders/restore-delete/ignored-files https://help.dropbox.com/files-folders/restore-delete/ignore... It's not exactly the most user-friendly method, and you have to run a script to do that consistently for generated files/folders like those from npm
- frosted-flakes 5y ago
  That sounds quite cumbersome and inflexible. Why can't they just have a .dropboxignore file? Even so, Dropbox/OneDrive have other problems, such as only syncing a single folder and not syncing over the local network. Plus it's expensive.
  - rrdharan 5y ago
    Dropbox syncs over the local network.

claytongulick 5y ago

For anyone interested in doing this programmatically in javascript, I wrote bit-sync [1], a js implementationof rsync. It's transport agnostic, so WebRTC or websockets or whatever is fine. Works in browser or Node. https://github.com/claytongulick/bit-sync https://github.com/claytongulick/bit-sync

Multicomp 5y ago

The recently release 1.16.1 supports the first beta of untrusted nodes, aka nodes that will sync data but don't know what it is, as it is encrypted with a passphrase you set. so drop off an old machine at your parents / buddies / exs house, give it internet connection and cron some updates + reboots + power on after an outage and boom, if your house and all your devices burn down, you can get your files via decrypting with that password you saved to your email / password manager. I love Syncthing and it's replaced Dropbox and Microsoft 365 for me. ok i keep the latter for online dictation when I'm not near a pc with dragon installed on it, but still, I don't need to trust MS with my data in their cloud.

pokive 5y ago
> give it internet connection and cron some updates + reboots + power on after an outage and boom wtf does this even mean?
- tapland 5y ago
  Cron jobs are time scheduled tasks. So schedule auto updating, automatic restart and login so that it always get back to syncing so that you don't have to actively maintain anything.
  - pokive 5y ago
    Thanks for explaining
kuroguro 5y ago
They finally released it? Been waiting for this! Gonna hook it up to one of my VPSes.
Bilal_io 5y ago
Ex's house? I'll go do that.
remram 5y ago
Reminder that sync is not backup. If you delete a file, all your other copies will happily delete it too, giving you no way to recover.

orena 5y ago

Amazing software, great development team. First I replaced Dropbox with resilio and a year ago replaced resilio with synchthing

rcthompson 5y ago

The best thing I can say about Syncthing is that after having set it up, I almost never have to think about it. It just works, and my files are always where I need them to be.

asicsp 5y ago

From https://tonsky.me/blog/syncthing/ https://tonsky.me/blog/syncthing/: >It’s amazing how great computer products can be when they don’t need to deal with corporate bullshit, don’t have to promote a brand or to sell its users.

mikevm 5y ago
It's also an unsustainable business model
- JetSpiegel 5y ago
  Rocking 463 releases so far. On the long term, we are all dead.

em-bee 5y ago

i love syncthing. but it is difficult to make backups from my phone where i need the ability to delete files that take up to much space, but that i want to keep on the backup. there is a function to ignore deletes, but it is hidden in the advanced settings which are difficult to access (some of those advanced settings should be hidden, but ignore delete is not one of them i think) another thing i miss is an easy ability to see if all files have been sent. currently the status only shows if all files from the remote device are received, but i care more if all local files are sent (and thus backed up)

thunderbong 5y ago
When you set up a folder to sync, you can choose the 'Folder Type' under the 'Advanced' tab. This sets up that folder to do bi-directional sync or not.
- em-bee 5y ago
  that does not matter, backup should sync files from the phone to the backup-device. it should not sync deletes from the phone to the backup-device. but uni-directional still syncs both, only ignoring delete on the backup-device prevents syncing deletes. the point is that it's complicated and the 'ignore delete' is easily missed. also because it is not shown in the status. so every time i have to wonder, did i set this up correctly? and i have to check the status on both the phone and the backup-device to make sure all is right. when i want to delete something on the phone i have to check on the backup-device to make sure that the file is backed up. because the phones status does not tell me that. it only tells me whether it downloaded everything from other devices which is less usefull, i can see which files are on the phone anyways. i can't see what's been uploaded to the backup-device unless i go look. just the other day i realized that for a new folder i had not set up ignore-delete. luckily, because i am paranoid, i made a hard-link duplicate of the backup before starting to delete files on the phone.
  - seniorivn 5y ago
    there is an alternative way, make the sync regular bidirectional but on server have a Cron job that archives(moves to a different directory) backup files that are no longer needed on local devices

lamontcg 5y ago

I used Resilio fairly unhappily for years and their Mac client would incessantly lock up and they've never fixed it. Switched to Syncthing something like 2 years ago and it has been solid for me across Mac and Linux so far. And I do moderately crazy things like using it to sync git repos to create replicas across multiple machines instead of manually using git across 5 machines and a hundred or so repos. Only complaint is that initial synchronization is really slow.

diarrhea 5y ago
> And I do moderately crazy things like using it to sync git repos to create replicas across multiple machines instead of manually using git across 5 machines and a hundred or so repos. You could set up your own git remote for this, Gitea is all the rage I've heard. But git remotes can be implemented many ways, no need for a dedicated server running.
- karlicoss 5y ago
  It's much easier in syncthing, you don't have to remember to commit/push etc. Works really well as long as you don't change the repos too often so index conflicts don't happen (but even if they do, worst case you just lose index state)
- lamontcg 5y ago
  I push everything to remotes as well, either GitHub, GitLab or just over ssh to a private server.

aborsy 5y ago

Great product. I only stopped using it because it has no iOS app. It was surprisingly able to punch through firewalls in some cases where Tailscale couldn’t (even though both use UPnP and similar stuff).

escalt 5y ago
The cool thing about Syncthing is their public network of community provided relay servers https://relays.syncthing.net/ https://relays.syncthing.net/ When two devices can't find each other on the local network they look for each other on public discovery servers and then pick a community provided relay to connect. The data is end-to-end encrypted between both devices, so the relay doesn't see the file contents. This works out of the box on almost all networks. Unfortunately IPv6 doesn't seem to work with their public relay network though...
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 5y ago
  Once the devices have discovered each other is it necessary for the traffic to pass through syncthing servers. Once each end has discovered the address:port of the other, then the devices can connect directly. I use a different peer-to-peer solution, older than syncthing and open source, and it does not send traffic through a supernode by default, it only uses the supernode for discovery.
- BitPirate 5y ago
  The use case of IPv6 relays isn't that strong to be honest. You don't have to deal with NAT and Syncthing can use UDP hole punching if the firewall doesn't completely block outgoing UDP traffic.
thefz 5y ago
> It was surprisingly able to punch through firewalls in some cases It uses external, community-run relays for that.
- BitPirate 5y ago
  And hole punching

eximius 5y ago

I think my only complaint about syncthing is really a nixos problem where the config keeps getting deleted and my devices disconnect.

podiki 5y ago

Been really liking Syncthing, mostly moved off of Dropbox to it. I've noticed recently that Dropbox is very slow at resyncing when waking from sleep (on Linux, at least), taking easily 5-10 minutes or something much longer before it realizing it is out of sync. On the other hand Syncthing is about as quick as anything once network connection is restored. It is syncing on a local network, but Dropbox used to be as quick, too. Another reason I'm glad I've switched.

elmimmo 5y ago

It does not support [0] (i.e. loses) extended attributes even between systems that share support for them, which in the case of macOS means no support for Finder tags, custom icons, legacy Mac fonts and countless other Mac features, maybe niche to most, but still important to those that make use of them. AFAIK it is not even in the roadmap. [0] https://docs.syncthing.net/users/faq.html#what-things-are-synced https://docs.syncthing.net/users/faq.html#what-things-are-sy...

Wowfunhappy 5y ago
I agree this is annoying—but isn't it par for the course? OneDrive does the same thing. Is Dropbox better? The thing that really annoyed me was that SyncThing synced .DS_Store files, leading to tons of unnecessary transfers and conflicts. They could be excluded via ignore patterns, but those patterns needed to be added to every folder—there was no global option. To fix this, I had to edit the code and create my own custom SyncThing build.
- elmimmo 5y ago
  Dropbox supports xattr transparently and fully AFAIK (Finder icons, Finder comments, Finder tags, legacy Mac fonts… all sync fine from my experience). Resilio Sync says it does partially [0] but IMHO not to an acceptable level (it keeps Finder tags for instance but loses Finder icons and completely cripples legacy Mac Fonts). Note that .DS_Store files are another different thing altogether. They are standard files storing the view state of their parent folder (and, incidentally, Dropbox does not sync them [1] and Resilio Sync is set to not sync them by default). [0] https://help.resilio.com/hc/en-us/articles/204754729-Alt-Streams-and-Xattrs-in-Sync https://help.resilio.com/hc/en-us/articles/204754729-Alt-Str... [1] https://www.dropbox.com/help/145/en https://www.dropbox.com/help/145/en
- BitPirate 5y ago
  PR for default ignores is in the making: https://github.com/syncthing/syncthing/pull/7530 https://github.com/syncthing/syncthing/pull/7530

rubin55 5y ago

Absolutely LOVE syncthing! User for about 3 years, after I left Dropbox (they incorrectly tagged a shared file as copyright-infringing - it was a bit too invasive for comfort). I sync about 8TiB between 10+ devices, ranging from tablets and TV to desktops and laptops. Since relatively recently, they also solved case (in)sensitive file names, which used to be a pita when changing file name casing only, but that’s all history now. Big fan!

alpaca128 5y ago
> they incorrectly tagged a shared file as copyright-infringing - it was a bit too invasive for comfort OneDrive also opens all uploaded pictures and automatically tags them based on the visible content. As long as an online service doesn't offer end-to-end encryption it's a safe bet that they'll read all your files (famously leading to the Google Drive-based DDOS attack scheme[0]). [0] http://chr13.com/2014/03/10/using-google-to-ddos-any-website/ http://chr13.com/2014/03/10/using-google-to-ddos-any-website...

quyleanh 5y ago

The most thing I love Syncthing is its selected folder sync function, which others services don't offer. Other advantages are opensource, privacy, lightweight, fast. Happy with it for months now.

solarkraft 5y ago

I love the idea of Syncthing (p2p, hell yes), but besides wishing for a “streaming”/“on demand” mode (only downloading a file from a node when you need it, basically Syncthing lite but in the official project, eventually evolving into a mixed mode with local and remote files besides each other) it just ... doesn’t work that well for me. Initially it kind of works but doesn’t saturate the network connection, then after a while it just doesn’t do anything anymore. The web interface doesn’t provide much information about what’s happening. I tried it with multiple different devices and know someone who has the same problem. At the same time I know many people it works flawlessly for. Has anyone else had a similar experience?

TuringTest 5y ago
I've had the same problem with Syncthing between Android mobile and desktop. Either devices don't see each other, or if I manage to sync one folder it synchronizes once and it never does anything again. I've switched to KDE Connect for manually transferring files from the phone (it can't be scheduled on Windows as far as I'm aware, but at least it works every time).

2Gkashmiri 5y ago

I used bittorent sync right from the day it launched. Then stopped after they moved to paid tier with forced obsolescence of free version features. I was pointed to syncthing and never have had any serious complaints. Good job

Fiahil 5y ago

I'd love to use Syncthing, but they don't have an iOS app for iPad.

rspoerri 5y ago
Try möbius sync
- Fiahil 5y ago
  It's not available in my region

tut-urut-utut 5y ago

I love syncthing. The best sync tool so far. I use it to sync between my phone, laptop and a VM. However, there are some annoying things: - Frequently I get sync conflicts, although I always edit file only on one host. - Sync is not triggered automatically, but based on the schedule interval. If I need synced files immediately, I need to open the control UI and force rescan of files.

thefz 5y ago
> Sync is not triggered automatically, but based on the schedule interval Pretty sure there's a "Watch for changes" toggle in the UI.

tok1 5y ago

Absolutely love syncthing, and migrated to it after using Seafile for several years. I also have quite some personal/business experience with iCloud and OneDrive, and syncthing is (mostly) superior. My wishlist for syncthing though, in prioritized order: 1. support for symlinks, to be able to sync files/folders that live outside of syncthing dirs. Some files I’d like to sync are in fixed locations that I cannot or don’t want to change, and Seafile allowed me to simply symlink them into an already synced dir. The counter-argument in GitHub discussions is having to distinguish between syncing symlink destinations vs. the symlink „as symlink“. For my situation that would be overthinking (as I’d never have the second use case) but I understand the hesitation, sadly. 2. provide a smart versioning/rollback solution leveraging ZFS snapshots, as my file server as participating node already creates rolling snapshots 3. (nice to have) mark certain directories as „sparse“, to sync data only when really accessed. Similar to what OneDrive provides

mikro2nd 5y ago
I'd respectfully suggest that HN is not the best forum for expressing those wishes, but using Syncthing's issue-tracker and/or fora/mailing lists (whatever form of community/dev discussion they use - haven't looked for it) would be more likely to get a response.
franknord23 5y ago
Re 1.: What about using a bind mount?

p0d 5y ago

How do you monitor your syncthing? I am also a fan. It occured to me however if my headless server in the roofspace running syncthing goes away I don't know about it. Is there a way of doing notifications in syncthing which doesn't require an external monitoring system?

killingtime74 5y ago
Do you mean like metrics like Prometheus? https://github.com/f100024/syncthing_exporter https://github.com/f100024/syncthing_exporter. The http interface can be exposed on the network.
- p0d 5y ago
  After posting I realised I was just being lazy. Yes, I need to get some sort of monitoring/graphing system going on. I have used Prometheus etc at work.

thefz 5y ago

Been a user for years, I also run a Discovery and a Relay server on two small VPS. Syncthing is great and has improved a lot over the years. It only hiccups when it detects changes in VeraCrypt containers which are still mounted and thus inaccessible to read.

codeflo 5y ago

It's great that many HNers like Syncthing, but personally, I seriously tried it maybe two years ago and didn't have a great experience. I wanted to sync my personal files between three computers, two desktops and a notebook, which don't always see each other. At first, this worked great. Obviously, there were conflicts when I accidentally edited something in two places without syncing up. What I didn't figure out was how to permanently resolve those. I ran into endless cycles were I had a conflict between two systems, resolved that, but the third one hadn't seen the conflict resolution, which produced another conflict, which I resolved, which the first system hadn't seen yet, ad infinitum. At least, that's what it looked like. Among other errors, files long since deleted on all systems would still show up as conflicts. To be fair, I didn't actually lose any data, and it's very possible I did something wrong that would be obvious to other people. But to me, it wasn't at all clear what and why, which scared me enough to move away from this setup. I don't want to take a lot of chances with my data.

austincheney 5y ago
If you would like to help with an alternative I plan to add syncing as a new feature to my networked file system application soon. The application is already cross OS and feature a familiar GUI and fully recursive directory hashing with ignore lists (ignore lists are only available using terminal commands at this time). It seems like synchronization is the next logic step and I could really use feedback and testing from interested users. The application is available at https://github.com/prettydiff/share-file-systems https://github.com/prettydiff/share-file-systems I would love for syncing to occur upon changes in real time as opposed to timed intervals like a cron job.
Siira 5y ago
What do you use now?
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
js8 5y ago
Not really sure if this is required for Syncthing but I would (cautiously) set it up so that there are no cycles between the shares. So if you have 3 machines that you need to sync, designate one as a hub which syncs with the other two, and the other two do not see each other. If you absolutely need to transfer data between two others as well, set up another completely independent share between them (a different directory on both machines). I am not sure but fully automated replication setup with cycles might be impossible due to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CAP_theorem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CAP_theorem. (Addendum: I think actually what is needed is even stronger - you should make sure before editing files that the designated "central hub" node is available and has been synced.)

renonce 5y ago

I wish I don't have to add devices and authorize every folder for each pair of devices manually. I like it but Resilio Sync is just much easier to use.

Macha 5y ago
You can set a device as an introducer and it will push its list of devices to the new device.

playpause 5y ago

I really wanted to like Syncthing, but it can’t handle git repos inside it - the moment you commit anything or switch branch, Syncthing irresolvably borks the .git folder on all machines. Dropbox handles git repos inside it perfectly, syncing all uncommitted changes as well as commit/branch state without any issues, ever.

karlicoss 5y ago
Hmm, I'm using git in syncthing folders all the time, and it works great -- how does borking manifest?
grandchild 5y ago
Interesting, I sync many Git repos, and they all work just fine. I even shared some with other people (to co-author). It all worked splendidly.
- playpause 5y ago
  Well that is weird. When googling for solutions, all I found was people saying it would never work, and smartass comments about using GitHub instead. So I gave up. Maybe I’ll give it another try. It was a very simple setup though, I don’t know what I could have been doing wrong.
willemmerson 5y ago
If only there was some kind of service that could sync git repos properly, some kind of 'hub' that could also deal with conflicts
- playpause 5y ago
  Yes very good. But GitHub doesn’t magically sync uncommitted working tree state between your computers.
JohnBerea 5y ago
My projects folder has a dozen or so git repos in it, and I've been syncing it for over a year without issues. Between two other computers. It doesn't matter which one I push/pull/commit/whatever from, the others mirror the operation.

jeltz 5y ago

Syncthing seems way too manual for my taste. I want something which i can easily provision with Ansible and which does not run a management ui. I want everything to be in config files which can be provisioned. It might be possible to run Syncthing like this but last time I checked it was poorly documented. I have also tried Unison, which is closer to my needs, but it has its own issues like having to be compiled with the same version of Ocaml on all servers.

mab122 5y ago
Well, everything is in config file in syncthing. and you can disable ui in that config file. https://docs.syncthing.net/users/config.html https://docs.syncthing.net/users/config.html
e3bc54b2 5y ago
I just backup Syncthing config file. I have also read it is possible to configure directories with Nix, but haven't tried that yet.

wazoox 5y ago

Can syncthing scale up to a couple petabytes? So far I'm using rsync, that scales, but is sloooow.

rpdillon 5y ago
100th percentile shows about 325TB[0], so while it may be able to and users may be doing that, they don't seem to be reporting statistics publicly. [0]: https://data.syncthing.net/ https://data.syncthing.net/

christiansakai 5y ago

I've been thinking to create a desktop app for family uses. Like, family photo albums, notes, precious documents, and more ambitious projects, maybe passwords? My relatively big families are scattered throughout a few different countries and homes. I am a fullstack web dev so creating web app or electron app is right up my alley, but not in distributed databases or peer to peer stuffs. I was looking at OrbitDB the other day, but I'm curious can it be programmed to just connect peer to peer to my family computers ip addresses? Also, as far as I know, I can't upload blob data to OrbitDB, and has to use IPFS instead. Can this syncthing solves this problem? Or more generally, is there any OSS software that already solves this problem? I'd love to learn how to build it. The whole system doesn't need to be high performance, it is just for family uses.

rakoo 5y ago
It sounds like you want Nextcloud (https://nextcloud.com/athome/ https://nextcloud.com/athome/) or cozycloud (https://cozy.io/en/features/ https://cozy.io/en/features/). Both are servers you can self-host, and mobile/desktop apps to make it more integrated.
rolisz 5y ago
You might want to check out Tailscale. They create a WireGuard based mesh VPN between all your devices, enabling secure communication between them. So you have one central DB and then all the other devices connect to it.

meonkeys 5y ago

Syncthing's most awesome features are speed, decentralization, security, reliability and easy firewall traversal. I've heard several mentions of it being used in place of services like Dropbox, OneDrive, Drive, Box. For the features above, I agree. What Syncthing is missing is usability for folks that use the proprietary services because they are easy to set up and maintain and share files from. For that I recommend Nextcloud. It is centralized, so perhaps a different use case. But certainly a more complete replacement if you (or people you support) are used to Dropbox. Also, just curious, but why is this on hacker news today? Was there a new announcement or release for Syncthing?

frosted-flakes 5y ago
It was mentioned in a comment in another thread yesterday, which may be why.

sir_eliah 5y ago

For anyone interested in simple, zero-configuration alternative for local networks, check dragit [0]. [0] https://github.com/sireliah/dragit https://github.com/sireliah/dragit * Note *: author here

incanus77 5y ago

Another vote for Syncthing here. Been using it about a year on two Macs (and occasionally a FreeBSD server / vintage machine, when I turn it on, for backup). Don’t have to think about it and it keeps about 75GB of data in my ~/Sync up to date without effort. I started trying it last year as part of an effort to reduce my third-party & cloud services & effectively got rid of Dropbox. The one trickier piece of the puzzle for me was mobile device support. I use Documents.app on iPad & iPhone combined with SFTP to my machines. Two versions per machine — LAN IP access or port-forwarded WAN access, depending on where I am. All setup with SSH keys so it’s really just one tap to get into whichever home machine I choose.

kyriakos 5y ago

If you are looking for something to sync files between hosts during development (e.g. sync project files to remote dev host etc) give https://mutagen.io/ https://mutagen.io/ a go. It does more than just file sync but been using it for its sync functionality for the past year with great success.