Here’s a question for those of you who use the Android app, or would like an iOS (or Windows mobile, etc.) version of it: What do you use it for, or what would you use it for? Select as many as you like.
If you don’t use or want a mobile app, feel free to check that last option.
Syncing photo library from phone to computer (unidirectional/backup)
Syncing photo library with other devices (bidirectional)
Syncing media (that you didn’t capture yourself; music to listen to, or movies to watch)
Syncing other files that you produce/edit/view on both computer and mobile (like text documents, etc)
Integration with some other app that stores data in files but doesn’t do sync by itself (please explain)
Use it for KeePass DB sync, and also synchronizing a text based notes app (Denkettel). On and off trial of 1 way backup of photos from phone to PC - currently OFF.
KeePass here, too. I’m currently keeping my database synchronized thanks to WebDAV integration in both KeePass proper and KeePass2Android, but I’d like to be able to keep my options open. I had been using Syncthing previously, but WebDAV has fewer headaches at the moment.
The other thing I’d mainly use Syncthing for on mobile is to pull music to my device from my desktop. I have a 700GB music collection, so using Syncthing for that at present is not practical. I’m currently using Resilio Sync for this. obviously I’d much rather use Syncthing.
shared folder with keepass db, todo.txt and pdf i need to read
As Scott Hansen said: Pictures/video sync from phones to server and laptops. Bidirectional, because it’s easy to clean up the phones (remove old/bad pictures)
BackUp Signal BackUps
i would absolutly love to have selctive sync (a easy UI for ignores), so that i can select the files (within a shared folder) i would like to have downloaded to the phone (like audiobooks or movies etc.)
I share my complete storage of my phone (ignoring some system folders) because copying stuff over USB is annoying and sometimes broken (for example some files are not visible).
I mainly use it for music and photos (photos in a separate folder - ignored in the one containing everything) but it is sometimes also nice for other files like notes in text files.
I also use it to sync my Keepass database. And it’s good to have an automated backup of my photos to my desktop without using anothe service provider in between.
Looks like I’m just like everybody else here. I have a synced folder primarily for KeePass (KeePassDroid app on phone, KeePassXC on laptop) and another unidirectional folder for photo/video backup. Occasionally I use a third for convenient transfer between laptop, phone, tablet, and/or home server. The Syncthing mobile app has been one of the most critical apps on my phone for years now. It really is an amazing piece of work, especially when I think about how little I think about it and how reliably it keeps my files in sync.
I’m not an iOS fan, but since my wife and several other friends and family have iOS devices, it would be a good thing if there were a Syncthing client for them too. But Apple’s active effort to discourage competitors to iCloud makes this a challenging proposition. Nextcloud on iOS has to use some silly trick with geolocation in order to wake itself up to check and sync in the background, and this in my experience is inconsistent and unreliable.
A use case that I think everyone would like to see (especially if there were an iOS app too) is a simple, ad-hoc file sharing capability. Say I’m chatting with my family in our Riot/Matrix room and I want to share a rather large video. I can upload it and have it consume lots of storage on the server for something we won’t really need to store for long. Or I can upload it using the Nextcloud app and then generate a public link (security through obscurity but still not technically private, and I have to set an expiration date or remember to unshare it). But what if I could “share via Syncthing” in a way that allowed me to select from a list of my family members with whom I wish to share, whose “personal” mobile Syncthing device IDs have been added to my Syncthing app already. After selecting the video(s), the app creates a temporary sync folder and keeps this active until all participants complete the sync or some other criteria are met that allow the share to be discarded. The family members would get a notification saying they have a new share that they can accept and then open the file when it downloads.
I use it to backup WhatsApp media to my PC, and also to sync a rotating wallpaper folder. This is generated by my PC out of a library of photos taken using my ‘proper’ camera. I don’t need Syncthing to sync my Android photos since Google does a pretty good job of that already.
I have a car telemetry logging android tablet without internet connection (in the car).
While I drive, the tablet connects to my smartphone wifi hotspot. Car telemetry gets synchronized via syncthing to this phone.
When I get home, carrying only my phone, it then gets synced to my home computers/servers. This way, the data magically travels from my car to my home, even though there’s no direct connection between them.
For my mobile devices, I also use syncthing as a remote file manager. I share a whitelist of the internal memory (via ignore-list), so the syncthing share only includes important stuff (camera folder, telegram/whatsapp, Downloads, etc).
I can manage the mobile devices’ content from my computer, remove blurred photos, back up important Downloads, etc.
BTW, this white-list took foreeeeeeeever to set up correctly, involving huge amounts of trial and error. And it doesn’t support all possible cases I have, since the ignore-list format cannot represent my desired white list.
If the devices’ storage gets full, I can then move stuff from the mobile device share, to folders shared only between the bigger computers. E.g. too many photos? Move 2gb of them to the larger superset folder (which currently has maybe 150gb of photos/videos). This larger folder is syncthing-shared between only the non-mobile devices.
I also use syncthing to manage a smaller selection of music that can fit the mobile devices. So I share a “portable-music” folder that will contain maybe 2gb of music, out of the bigger collection of music that the desktop/server computers hold (with syncthing folders too, between themselves only).
Audiobooks (Youtube -> Extract MP3 - yes, this is not copyrighted stuff :))
Music
Movies
Photos (this is a bit complicated. I am syncing from phone and a tablet to my workstation. There I backup/move away most pics and then sync a selection back to the Android devices)
I sync a KeePass db file between all my mobile devices and computers. I don’t like storing on cloud servers. Also sync part of my music library to my phone for offline listening.
