Best sync software in my view. The only downside is that there is no good iOS app.
I think the developers made the right decision focusing the software on peer to peer sync (i.e., not expanding to nearby “cloud features”: backup, photos, videos, office, etc).
Syncthing is like the reliable, quiet roommate who always does their dishes, whereas dealing with different file systems feels like trying to figure out who left their half-eaten pizza on the couch.
iOS literally doesn't have "just there for storage" directories that are not icloud. Either you use the photos pool, or you use icloud, or you use per-app directories that are local to each app. But then those directories cannot be accessed by other apps. Even if access to individual files is implemented, it's often very buggy.
Say you have a pictures directory shared via Möbius Sync. Then you want to edit one of the pictures with a pictures editing app that is not the builtin photos app. The app crashes, or cannot save an edited copy of the file into the same directory. I encountered this in real life.
Apple has a “files” app that lets you access your “home directory” on the phone. It def has “just there for storage” space. It’s literally the best way to access/delete some log files.
That directory doesn't work with Möbius Sync however. It gives an error when you try to set it as the local path for sync. Also, I can't figure out how to access that from Linux via ifuse: https://github.com/libimobiledevice/ifuse/issues/58
> iOS literally doesn't have "just there for storage" directories that are not icloud. Either you use the photos pool, or you use icloud, or you use per-app directories that are local to each app.
Isn’t this no longer the case
for the last 5 years or so?
‘Files’ allows to access local non iCloud folders and every app with the right entitlement can write/read there.
You can even integrate your own cloud service into ’Files’ making in indistinguishable from iCloud (in some ways at least).
Working copy has some of doing this. I had it syncing my logseq notes and it worked fine (other than merge conflict type things). The setup was fairly convoluted though.
iOS effectively blocks all background apps from accessing the internet except a few kb per sec. You are forced to pay apple for the convenience of a cloud backup. Walled garden dark pattern
- Syncthing is available in the Play Store. If it wasn't, I could use F-Droid or simply download the app from Github.
- It works in the background and it has access to my folders. I can take a picture and few seconds later it's on my PC without having to change or move anything.
Not saying that iOS is bad, but I felt tied when I had to use it. It's not for me.
I just found out it's a regulation from France regarding encryption (mostly declarative paperwork), so it's not an Apple App Store thing. Seems like Apple's App Store enforces it, but maybe not Play Store? And so either it may be published but may not be in compliance with regulations, or SyncThing did the paperwork but Mobius Sync did not.
"The only downside is that there is no good iOS app."
That's a dealbreaker for iOS folks, though.
I hate the mission creep Dropbox has embraced, and would definitely consider something else, but I need access to my stuff on Windows, MacOS, and iOS. Anything that doesn't hit all three notes isn't a contender.
Is there anything that is a dealbreaker for "iOS folks"? If usability would have been a dealbreaker they might not have been on iOS in the first place.
Let's just look at Syncthing not being on iOS - Apple makes sure things like Syncthing can't be on iOS. Mobius Sync does a trillion workarounds to give a semblance of being on iOS. So maybe "iOS folks" should reach out to Apple talking about why softwares like Syncthing (which is top notch!) is not on "iOS".
I mean for heaven's sake Apple keeps devices so limited and they themselves don't write softwares to fully utilise a device's capacities and features and don't let anyone else write them. I was reading Logic Pro on iPad comments a day ago and "iOS folks" instead of being enraged at Apple giving peanuts in terms of capability on a fully capable device (that too after years and then not opening it up for other devs), they were going crazy as if Jesus just made third appearance on the fruit company website.
Other third party cloud storage providers seem to have no issue developing decent apps and there are APIs that allow them to be integrated in a similar way icloud is. So I’m not sure this is entirely on Apple…
Toys or not, they are incredibly powerful devices that are very much locked down for some arbitrary reasons.
Any sort of basic interaction outside of their own ecosystem even through established standards and protocols is made difficult or impossible.
Case in point, I wanted to transfer a pic from an Android phone to an IPhone and was surprised to find that ios doesn't allow bluetooth file transfer!
It is completely ridiculous to think that you need to involve a third-party app/service or device to transfer small amounts of data between two very expensive communication devices sitting next to each other.
>Any sort of basic interaction outside of their own ecosystem even through established standards and protocols is made difficult or impossible.
Weird. I interact with ALL SORTS of other systems via established or even proprietary protocols using my iOS devices.
>Case in point, I wanted to transfer a pic from an Android phone to an IPhone and was surprised to find that ios doesn't allow bluetooth file transfer!
This is the kind of thing that Android people like to complain about, but the complaint is based in a failure to appreciate that iOS doesn't work like Android.
There's only very limited interaction with the file system in iOS. This is by design. Complaining about that is like complaining that the original Mac had no command line. It's missing the point.
Sharing photos between phones is most often done via messaging or email. That works beautifully. In neither case is a third party service required.
There are additional avenues for photo sharing between two iOS devices, but those are features of the platform. It's not a failure of iOS that they don't work with Android.
This is the kind of thing Android people complain about, but it never comes up for iOS people. Sharing a photo from a computer involves plenty of "third party" actions, too; it's just not a big deal. It's simple and intuitive.
>>Case in point, I wanted to transfer a pic from an Android phone to an IPhone and was surprised to find that ios doesn't allow bluetooth file transfer!
>
>This is the kind of thing that Android people like to complain about, but the complaint is based in a failure to appreciate that iOS doesn't work like Android.
I'm going to have to disagree with you here. Airdrop is basically the same thing as Android's Quick Share/Nearby Share, utilizing BT to find and pair devices, and then perform a direct wifi transfer of data. Android<->Android works no problem. iOS/MacOS<->iOS/MacOS no problem. Hell, I can even do this between Android devices and Windows/Linux machines. But Android<-/->iOS/MacOS - FOR NO GOOD REASON other than to keep them separate for capitalist reasons (doesn't matter what excuse you give it, brand differentiation, brand protection, walled-garden security - they're all excuses at the end of the day).
>There's only very limited interaction with the file system in iOS. This is by design.
In response to that, Apple can very easily extend the functionality over the API-layer to allow the sharing of, AT LEAST, photos and videos between Android and iOS/MacOS devices without having to worry so much about this issue. No need to give direct filesystem access.
>iPhones are just toys that don't get real work done.
That speaks more to your failure than to iOS's. I've been getting meaningful work done on iOS for a decade.
It sure is popular for a certain sort of HN poster, presumably deeply insecure about their own choices, to drop in and do their best to shit on iOS whenever anyone says something positive about it. It's predictable as clockwork, but as useful as tits on a bull.
which tool besides syncthing can do automatic backups of my phone? by automatic i mean copy photos and other data to a second device of my choosing as soon as they are created.
the primary use for syncthing on my phone is to make sure data is backed up immediately.
i have yet to find an app that has the resilience and flexibility of syncthing for this purpose.
apart from that the primary issue i have with syncthing is that the app on a device can not tell me if all data in a particular folder is fully copied to the other device. it only tells me if all local folders are complete.
it also gets confusing when you have more than a few devices and sync between all of them. i recently discovered that i had a set up A<->B<->C but A and C were not connected. i never noticed because A and C were always in sync, until device B died. but it took me some time to notice that because i didn't realize that i missed to connect A to C directly.
it would be nice to have some way to get an overview of the whole graph to see what syncs to where.
>automatic backups of my phone?
Full Android phone backup to a drive can be done with Seedvault on a schedule. I think you are asking about automatic upload though. I use Nextcloud to auto upload new pictures to my server as well as for Seedvault backup.
yes, automatic upload. schedules are impractical for phones that are not connected to wifi on a schedule.
i also occasionally use the phone to take photos of items that i want to process on my laptop right away. syncthing is faster and more convenient than taking my camera and then moving the sd card from the camera to the laptop.
for nextcloud i would need to set up a server that probably also needs to be always online. syncthing allows me to backup to my laptop and is opportunistic about it, ie whenever both are on wifi.
i am also using syncthing to manage my audio files. on the laptop i decide what i want to listen to by copying the files into a specific folder, and that gets copied to the phone. when i am done with a file i delete it from the phone, and that gets synced back to the laptop. syncthing is perfect here, and so using it for backup in the other cases is worth it over having yet another solution.
iMazing can perform wifi-based backups and there is an included tool (iMazing mini I believe) that hangs out in the menu bar running in the background to perform scheduled backups. Requires iPhone and Mac tho.
Is there a way to leverage this software and deploy something like a self hosted Google drive that also allows us to generate public links for sharing ?
It is pretty nice - I've been using it for over a year to sync files between my Windows desktop and 14" M1 Pro.
I've only come across a few hiccups:
- Sometimes MacOS updates "break" Syncthing (fairly easy to fix, just have to re-authorize permissions)
- Sometimes you end up with a (large) file/folder syncing that you don't want to sync.. Trying to sneak in an ignore rule after the fact and delete the file/folder from the device you don't want it on? That usually doesn't go over well.. I usually end up having to pause sync and fix the resulting conflict manually.
There is. Check out Mobius Sync - it’s as fast as PC on foreground and supports background syncing (albeit slower). You do have to pay a little but it’s worth the cost and you get it forever. I use it routinely to sync all my files on PC on the go.
It also phones home by default unless you turn it off (via crash and usage reporting), and in the default vendor-provided state grants arbitrary remote code execution ability to the developer (via unattended auto update which is on by default). Fortunately most distro packages and docker containers disable this dangerous behavior
> in the default vendor-provided state grants arbitrary remote code execution ability to the developer (via unattended auto update which is on by default)
I find this a curious, borderline alarmist framing of the automatic update mechanism. Many pieces of software have automatic updates. What you say is no less true for common programs like Firefox or Google Chrome.
Obviously you have to consider your threat model, but the number of people willing to trust a specific Syncthing binary they're downloading from the internet, but who are wary of trusting published updates going forward, must be relatively small.
(I am a Linux user and use the OS packages rather than automatic updates, but automatic updates are quite common outside of Linux distro packages)
It also connects to many "Discovery" servers on the internet in its default configuration, which you don't need enabled if you're just syncing between machines on an internal network.
Usage reporting. Crash reporting is on by default without asking, as is use of the public relays.
The arbitrary remote code execution vulnerability is much more troubling and critical, however. Most people don't realize that by running syncthing they grant the syncthing developer the ability to execute any code they want on their machine (including the ability to read or exfiltrate any file on the filesystem).
Even after disabling crash reporting, auto-update, relays, discovery, etc, it will still connect to the internet. It's actually very difficult to make it behave.
The only solution is to blank a few URLs in the configuration for things that can't be disabled. Then at first sight it seems to work... But you check your firewall logs a few days later and what do you know? Some dropped connection attempts.
Still, there aren't many alternatives that work as well as SyncThing, so you gotta pick your battles...
Which region are you using? I’m not sure with the case in other countries, but in China we buy Apple accounts for several CNY ($1~$2 in US dollars) to bypass region restrictions.
I think the developers made the right decision focusing the software on peer to peer sync (i.e., not expanding to nearby “cloud features”: backup, photos, videos, office, etc).