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Syncthing works brilliantly! The web UI is excellent, warns you when you're about to do something ill-advised, and stuff like QR codes makes adding clients and
by KennyBlanken 5y ago
Syncthing works brilliantly! The web UI is excellent, warns you when you're about to do something ill-advised, and stuff like QR codes makes adding clients and folders fairly easy. The separation between folders and devices is handled well. You can easily have half a dozen shared folders between several computers with any mix-and-match combination including which one is 'authoritative' and so on.
I used to use it on Android to keep my 'camera roll' synced to my desktop. I preferred setting the ignore file to exclude android's thumbnails directory, but otherwise it worked great. I'd take a photo with my phone and almost before I could open the shortcut on the desktop, boom, the photo was there, since the android client detects changes in the filesystem.
I also used it to sync my password database, and a cross-platform notebook app's database. Worked flawlessly for all of them.
Ditto for a folder shared between my MacOS laptop and Windows desktop.
Lots of controls, especially in the forked android client. Don't want the sync client to run on any network other than your home network? Done. Don't want your syncthing clients to try and do NAT transversal / discovery outside whatever network it's on? No problem.
The biggest bummer is that there's no iOS client. Had to switch to Nextcloud, which so far has been working OK, but the number of people that have problems with the iOS client is quite high (problems such as syncs being so slow it takes days to sync a camera roll), and it's generally sluggish and doesn't work in the background (yes, I know, Apple's fault.) However, Nextcloud does allow me to sync contacts and calendars (I think. I haven't tried to set it up yet.)
One warning: Sycnthing really does not like it when you delete the dotfile folder inside the shared folder(s). Don't do that :)
- _emacsomancer_ 5y agoThere's Mobius, a third party client for iOS: https://www.mobiussync.com/ https://www.mobiussync.com/ . I've never used it, so I don't know how good it is.
- Reventlov 5y agoI would not qualify the web UI of "excellent" : understanding the relations between paired devices, remote devices, folders you want to sync, and so on is harder than what it should be. Likewise, the android application is so bad the best way is to open the web UI on your phone to do stuff (and sometimes, it's the only way to achieve some goals). There is definitely a lot of room for improvement for easier adoption, yet, this is one of the few sync app that work for me, even behind NAT, with closed ports, and so on.
- bipson 5y agoThe first thing I really like about syncthing is that it does what it is supposed to do very well (besides very seldom glitches), while not being dropbox, nextcloud, owncloud, etc. but p2p and entirely independent of any external tools/devices/etc. The second thing I like is that it is a successful FOSS project, meaning it works and is being regularly and often improved by its users. Your comment, as helpful as you may feel it is, is contradictory to my second - very strong - feeling. I really think to UI works quite good, and by god, if a better solution is so obvious to you, why haven't you proposed it yet, or - god forbid - made a merge/pull request??
- dolni 5y ago> and by god, if a better solution is so obvious to you, why haven't you proposed it yet, or - god forbid - made a merge/pull request?? Because there isn't any obligation to? Why do you think you would be entitled to ask for that?
- djbusby 5y agoAren't they just suggesting to open a bug/issue in place of complaining on HN? Seems a fair, small ask to me.
- dolni 5y agoThere is a discussion being had. This guy was sharing his opinion about syncthing. That still doesn't obligate him to open a bug or do any work for the project.
- mPReDiToR 5y ago"Entitled to ask"? I think freedom of speech allows for it. Can I have a million pounds, from you personally, please? Also, that might be the small nudge which potentially has a user actually contribute in some circumstances. I'm not sure your question is fair.
- 5y ago
- hparadiz 5y agoThe thing with the .stfolder file is annoying as hell. I use it to sync the build output folder for my Android builds but sometimes I need to run a clean and it wipes out the folder. Syncthing's developers for whatever reason just can't seem to grasp that sometimes I could careless about a folder's history and just need my files synced. My fix it to run `touch .stfolder` in the build directory which fixes it but seriously Syncthing? Just put in some reasonable defaults and call it a day. Otherwise it's perfectly fine.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- HKH2 5y agoIf you put a non-empty placeholder file in that folder, it won't be empty any more, so it shouldn't be removed.
- hparadiz 5y agoYea but it doesn't matter. The clean from gradle deletes the folder entirely and creates a new one in it's place. I don't care. Just sync the path. That's all I need. Instead Syncthing literally stop syncing ALL folders because "oh no something went wrong". For whatever reason open source software always has these weird edge case engineering "solutions" that really aren't that great. If someone was actually a paying customer and asked for this the engineers would just figure something out instead of making excuses for why it is the way it is.
- libeclipse 5y agoIt's easy to open a pull request instead of complaining
- j1elo 5y agoCommercial products usually aim to satisfy its paying customer's needs. FOSS is, not always but most times, about satisfying one's own needs. So it won't be that easy to change a developer's mind who is determined about their way of doing things even if it is not the best way for others.
- vegai_ 5y ago>The biggest bummer is that there's no iOS client. https://www.mobiussync.com/ https://www.mobiussync.com/
- Tomte 5y agoSecond this. Works flawlessly, is rather cheap, and the developers encourage donations to the main SyncThing project.
- KennyBlanken 5y agoHow is "you have to manually copy files around every time you want to use them" "works flawlessly"? Have you not seen how stuff is supposed to work with cloud storage providers in iOS? Because it's indistinguishable in function from local on-device storage.
- p2t2p 5y agoYes this. Best money I’ve ever spent on software
- Fiahil 5y agoNot available in my region, sadly
- gregoriol 5y agoSame here in Europe, wtf?
- antman 5y agoMy iOS Nextcloud is stealthily paused when in the background (a few kb/s e.g. just enough for notices) as I think most iphone apps. So it is not competitive with apple backuo.
- makeworld 5y ago> Lots of controls, especially in the forked android client. Here's that fork: https://github.com/Catfriend1/syncthing-android https://github.com/Catfriend1/syncthing-android You can also search up Syncthing-Fork on Google Play.
- fps_doug 5y agoYes that was annoying to me at first. The official client seems to still get updates, so you don't immediately see anything wrong with it, but has a couple really annoying issues that have been fixed in Syncthing-fork for years.
- alias_neo 5y agoI tried Syncthing, then I tried Nextcloud, and for the goal of just syncing camera roll and backing up my password manager, they were both a bit of a hassle. Now I use Minio with FolderSync (Android App, I use the paid one, but the free is perfectly capable) to backup my camera roll and I wrote a very simply WebDAV server in Go to backup my (Android) password manager DB which only supports WebDAV, I sit NGINX in front of them both to terminate TLS and to handle basic auth for the WebDAV server, though I could easily implement basic auth in that too (again, my password manager only supports basic auth). If someone can suggest a better password manager for Android with a good UI, good integration (e.g. auto-fill), has a Linux desktop app and can backup to WebDAV or Minio I'd jump in a heartbeat. I considered Bitwarden, but I don't want to run the Mono/Windows server container, and I don't want to rely on the Rust port which is behind in features and is susceptible to the upstream breaking APIs.
- rjzzleep 5y agoKeepass2Android/KeepassDX with Nextcloud? I don't understand how running Minio with a custom built webdav server is easier than Nextcloud has integrated WebDAV access.
- alias_neo 5y agoI used to run Nextcloud. Nextcloud did a bunch of stuff I didn't need, is a larger attack vector and usually took an entire afternoon/evening every time I needed to do an upgrade. So far I spent less time setting all this up, and writing a WebDAV server than any one upgrade of Nextcloud took me. Minio is zero-maintenance, if it needs an upgrade I just pull a newer Docker image. My WebDAV server is fewer than 100 lines of Go and extremely easy to maintain.
- chrisdhal 5y agoI run Nextcloud in a docker image (on unRaid). Upgrades are a docker pull away too, never had any issues. I use Nextcloud on my phone (Android) to backup my camera too, the automatic sync is wonderful and works well. It does stuff I don't need too, but it's pretty easy to use and setup and it integrates well with the OS (Windows and Mac at least).
- goodpoint 5y ago> The web UI is excellent The web UI is perhaps the only pain point of syncthing. It's very confusing around folder paths VS IDs, especially around the "Default Folder". Functions like Actions > Show ID are presented poorly. Importantly, the UI is not intuitive at all. You need to read the docs to understand what you are supposed to do.
- stiltzkin 5y agoTo add there is also Syncthing for Android TV, makes so much easier transfering files between devices, like to a seedbox.
- cynod 5y agoOh really? Didn't know that.. very handy!