When I started using syncthing some years ago it worked, but it was still a bit brittle. I ran over time into several situations where the sync would just stop or not start, be slow, some error happened somewhere and the GUI did not show them properly, there was no built in reacting to file modification, just a regular sync interval. It was good enough to be used, but certainly not done yet.<p>Yesterday I installed it again on my main PC (part of a migration from a different linux distro) and I was impressed: The notifications when adding new devices arrived with a very small delay, syncing just worked, file monitoring is now built in, the error message related to that (inotify limit) was helpful.<p>Syncthing came a long way and is great software, congrats for reaching 1.0!
I'm using syncthing to sync three computers. Two slaves connected to one 24/7/365 online master. Unless I'm behind a very aggressive firewall, I can connect to master to sync everything.<p>It creates a big peace-of-mind. Debian's version was built with iNotify for a very long time, so I never got big CPU spikes. I think iNotify is merged into master last year or so.
I've been using syncthing for a few years because I was sick of missing files when going from my laptop to desktop and vice versa. I wanted to sync most folders in my /home directory (documents, photos, videos, code...) While ignoring node_modules folders.<p>It has worked surprisingly fantastically. I thought I would need a server to use as a "master" but syncthing actually supports merging folders automatically. It does not need a static IP address for either computer and it will opportunistically sync my laptop and desktop when they are both on the same network.<p>I had no idea before I tried using it that syncthing could support such a setup so well. High praise.
I've seen Syncthing before but I don't think it is exactly what I need. If I'm not wrong, it is a secure p2p protocol and a suite of apps implementing them to synchronize folders between devices, in the way you would do with Rsync.<p>That means if I have several terabytes that I want to sync between devices, I'd need to have enough space in every device, is that right? (and each device would get a 1:1 copy of the folders). I read that when there are conflicts, the apps create a new "filename".sync-conflict file so you can manually resolve conflicts.<p>What I'd like is a secure way to backup all my files to some cloud provider (S3?) across all my devices, and have an MRU cache in a folder where I can configure the size (for instance, keep at most, say, 512mb of the files I most recently used). For things like photos, it would be better if the sync thing would get thumbnails from the cloud, so I would not need to download the whole thing just to find photos.<p>GDrive / GPhotos is the thing I use now. The combo has a lot of bells and whistles and I'd be fine having a simpler product where I could have more (perceived?) control on how things display, when syncing happens, etc (in lieu of other things like the nice A.I. photo search, integration with GSuite of apps, etc.). Kinda like using a file explorer on my local desktop.
The biggest problem I have with syncthing is that it can't be used with iOS, and there are no plans to ever support iOS. I don't personally use iOS, but my wife does, so I can't get her phone to automatically sync pictures of our family with my phone and computers.<p>I suppose the people involved don't use the platform, and I realize iOS is more annoying to develop for than Android, but it's a pretty major downside and it's tempting me to use a cloud provider instead. I'd much rather just pay $15-$20 or something for an iOS app.<p>Maybe now with the 1.0 release it will be stable enough that a third party can step up and make an iOS app?
I can certainly see the need for something like this, though I've seen a lot more folks on another forum talking about ownCloud and Nextcloud as alternatives to Dropbox business plans.<p>I <i>really dislike</i> that the Syncthing website appears to have mastered modern "we won't tell you what it is" marketing speak. Did I miss something and this is now a game with scoring for speaking around topics?<p><i>"Syncthing replaces proprietary sync and cloud services with something open, trustworthy and decentralized. Your data is your data alone and you deserve to choose where it is stored, if it is shared with some third party and how it's transmitted over the Internet."</i><p>Oooooooh, new shiny with buzzwords! What's it do? Is it a replacement for Chrome's cross-system syncing? Firefox Sync (which I think can already be self-hosted actually)? Password managers? Maybe hosted Exchange? Wait, it's not?<p>Oh, wait, it's a multi-system file syncing package. Well why didn't you say so while you were telling me I deserved to have control and blah blah blah. Cripes, it even says "a large number of features have already been implemented" then provides a list that implies that running on Windows, OSX, Linux, the BSDs and Solaris is one of those features.<p>There are several places where what it does is <i>implied</i>, but to actually get to a statement of "For this guide let’s assume you have two machines between which you want to synchronise files." I have to go to the bottom of the site, click Docs, then either click on Introduction and Getting Started (in the documentation structure) or click on the "getting started guide" link within the first paragraph of the Introduction.<p><i>grmbl get off my lawn</i><p>Edit: I should note, I'm not talking about the 1.0 announcement on their forums - that's for folks already actively involved with it. I'm talking about the very spare <a href="https://syncthing.net" rel="nofollow">https://syncthing.net</a>
I've used syncthing to keep my music, books and docs all in sync between my home server and my laptop. It does a great job. I have also used it for a few years now in place of plex sync. I have plex keep certain unwatched shows optimized for mobile and I just sync that directory to my laptop and phone so I always have my unwatched shows with me. Plex sync was totally unreliable for this so I moved away from it and syncthing has never disappointed.
Syncthing is great. I use it to sync my password database and some other stuff across my devices and have not run into a single issue. I set it up 3 years ago and haven't had to touch it since. I had no idea it was technically in "beta" all this time.
Does it still consume vast amounts of CPU and memory? A few years back I used it on a few hundred GB and it almost constantly used 1-2 CPU cores. On the server it racked up thousands of CPU hours, i.e. it cost real money to run.<p>Apart from that I don't recall any major problems - which is very positive for anything related to file synchronization.
I'd love to start using Syncthing, but the absence of storage encryption is absolutely a deal breaker. As I understand, it was a planned feature quite a while ago, but now it isn't even in the backlog anymore. A pity, really.
How does this compare with Perkeep (previously Camlistore)? They seem to be very similar, though I haven't made the jump to try either out.<p>What I'd like is integration with on of Perkeep or Syncthing from my freeNAS box to my local devices.
Been using syncthing for a few years - I had used BitTorrent Sync until my default search provider became Yahoo! and I could no longer trust anything BitTorrent Inc was doing...<p>Syncthing is great - a folder that syncs, I have a VPC in the cloud, so for the data I really care about, it's mirrored offsite more or less in real time in case my house burns down.
Congratulations to the team!<p>I like a lot the announcement: it's very easy to stay perpetually in beta to escape commitment. Their reasons for graduating are sensible and I wish more developers of software on version 0.x since a long time would replicate it.
I didn't know Syncthing and after installing it on a couple of machines I'm very impressed!<p>However, I'm surprised too see that by default the whole interface is available on 127.0.0.1:8384. It is possible to set a password but it's a bit hidden in the settings and the documentation does not insist on it.<p>This makes me wonder, how bad is it for a malicious program running locally to have access to this API?
As others here have noticed, Syncthing has improved by leaps and bounds over the last couple of years.<p>I use it for syncing my phone (everything!) to a pc, and keepin several ps's up to date with each other. These days, it just works. Works so well, in fact, that I have begun experimenting with up-sync to a production server. So far, things are looking real good.
Is syncthing already able to do client side encryption (so you can host your files on a server without the server knowing the files you are storing there)? I remember some years back it only used encryption during the file transfer.
One of the forum posts says:<p>> I really love to use syncthing as a anti-bit-rot check system (i already do^^).<p>Bit-rot is something I want to (manually) protect against, without setting up a NAS running ZFS. How would you use Syncthing?
Is this a good thing to use to, say, keep two git repo checkouts in sync between a laptop and dev server, to avoid the need to do "deploys" for hacking/testing? Or is that overkill?
Last time I used syncthing was couple weeks ago v. 0.14.54 and it's still hit or miss for me in terms of upload speed. Whenever I'm sharing something with friends the upload speed is completly random from 1Mbit to 20Mbit(my max upload speed).
I didn't figure out how to debug this issue but I've tried even running my own relay just in case but that didn't solve it either.
For those, like me, wondering what Syncthing is, Wikipedia describes it as "a free, open-source peer-to-peer file synchronization application available for Windows, Mac, Linux, Android, Solaris, Darwin, and BSD. It can sync files between devices on a local network, or between remote devices over the Internet. Data security and data safety are built into the design of the software."
I switched from Dropbox->Seafile after Dropbox stopped supporting BTRFS. Seafile is minimalistic like syncthing, but also has an iOS app that will do photo syncing which is important for me.