Folder keeps being set as read only

Everything in a folder called “My Programs” keeps being to set to “Read only” for my account on my MacBook, but not my Windows PC. I dont know if this is Syncthing’s fault but I cant think of anything else that would be causing it. I cant get it to consistently occur, currently I just have to run chmod -R +w . whenever it happens to give back my account read+write permissions.

I installed Syncthing on my Windows 10 through SyncTrayzor, and MacOS 13.3.1 through syncthing-macos, although I used these 3rd party GUI clients I believe its a problem with Syncthing itself. I have 6 folders all set up the same, all folders were originally on my Windows PC and then synced to my Mac and set to “Send & Receive” Folder type, but it only happens on this one folder.

For the affected folder, is Syncthing’s “Ignore Permissions” setting enabled on the Mac?

Yes, on my Mac I have just “desktop.ini” in my “Ignore Permissions” on all folders (similarly I have “.DS_Store” in my “Ignore Permissions” for windows desktop). Should I tried removing these?

It sounds like you’ve got “desktop.ini” and “.DS_Store” as ignore patterns (see the Ignoring Files page in the Syncthing documentation), which is fine, but it’s different from the ignorePerms setting.

Because the affected files aren’t consistently getting marked as read-only, chances are that something on your Windows PC is temporarily making files read-only when Syncthing accesses them. Are the affected files frequently being updated on the Windows PC?

Sorry for confusion I have “Ignore Permissions” turned OFF

This folder is were I save my code / programmes, and I do save my files very frequently (like between most lines of code) so the files would be frequently updated, however havnt had problems with other folders were I save often such as my blender folder.

No problem. So if you enable “Ignore Permissions”, Syncthing will ignore the permissions from your Windows PC and just let the umask for your account on your MacBook do its thing.

A lot depends on the individual apps and what mode is specified during a file handle request. It could be that the coding tools you’re using ask for exclusive access, or an IDE that keeps multiple source code files open at a time.

With Blender, even when it’s generating individual video frames, it’s open for writing, close, repeat. There’s little reason to keep files open. 3D models are loaded into RAM, edited, and then saved/exported, so there’s less chance of a collision.

The way Windows handles concurrent file access adds another wrinkle (the reason why backing up open files takes extra care). Microsoft’s Sysinternals Handle utility should offer some insight into what’s going on behind the scenes if enabling “Ignore Permissions” in Syncthing isn’t an option.

Thanks for the info! Ive enabled Ignore Permissions and will check in a couple days if the problems stopped.

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