Syncthing under Win 10

[fracre (Franz Cresta)]

Hello good evening I installed Syncthings a few days ago on my Win10 PC and on various Android devices. Everything works fine, although I am not a specialist in computing. I only want to sync my Android devices to the PC in one direction. That works fine. The only thing that annoys me is that I always have to keep Syncthings open on the PC, which is correct, but the window for active synchronisation on the desktop annoys me. Is there also a way to let the software run in the background like it does on Android? Sorry for the question and thanks for your help! Franz Cresta

[acolomb (André Colomb)]

Hi and welcome to Syncthing!

There are some third-party software tools we call “wrappers” that allow running in the background and provide some better integration into the operating system. On Windows 10 I would recommend to install SyncTrayzor, which I use myself as well.

You can find links to that and other similar tools on the project’s download page.

Hope that helps!

[billstewart]

For Windows, there is the Windows installer package. When you install, you can choose to install for all users or for the current user only. If you install for all users, the installer installs Syncthing as a Windows service that runs no matter which user is logged on. If you install for the current user, Syncthing will only run when that user logs on. You can choose which mode to use when you start the install.

The package is available here:

GitHub - Bill-Stewart/SyncthingWindowsSetup: Syncthing Windows Setup

[tomasz86]

Or, assuming that you’ve simply downloaded the syncthing.exe executable from the official website, you can just do syncthing.exe -no-console and be done with it . Also, just in case you don’t want to (or cannot) use any 3rd party tools, https://docs.syncthing.net/users/autostart.html has detailed instructions on how to set Syncthing up to start automatically and run in background using built-in system tools only.

[OCRenkist (Yad)]

@fracre

my Win10 PC

Also keep in mind that in Windows, the operating system is itself spyware, so any encryption used by Syncthing in-transit will be unable to secure your files against data-exfiltration while they are stored on the Windows machine.

@fracre

I am not a specialist in computing

I’m assuming PC = personal computer = desktop, but keep in mind that all personal computers are PCs, including those made by Apple, especially after 2006 because they use the same parts as other PCs, despite the irony of the advertising campaign starting around that time, but I digress. (And I am not endorsing Apple: Their operating systems are also proprietary.)

Also: Glad to see you have found Syncthing, and welcome to the Syncthing forum community!

[tomasz86]

@OCRenkist

Also keep in mind that in Windows, the operating system is itself spyware, so any encryption used by Syncthing in-transit will be unable to secure your files against data-exfiltration while they are stored on the Windows machine.

With all due respect, a topic in the support category is not the right place to criticise the operating system used by the user. Not only is it not going to help solve the problem at hand, but it will also likely annoy the person asking for support.

I’d say the only exception from this could be if they were using something very outdated/insecure and/or not officially supported by Syncthing.

Off-topic:

Windows telemetry is described in detail in https://docs.microsoft.com/windows/privacy/configure-windows-diagnostic-data-in-your-organization. However controversial it is, even at the highest setting, Microsoft hasn’t got access to actual user files without explicit permission (e.g. when uploading samples to Windows Defender and such).

[calmh (Jakob Borg)]

@OCRenkist

especially after 2006 because they use the same parts as other PCs

… except since 2020, when we’re back to custom silicon with a different instruction set than Intel/AMD (“other PCs”).

[Andy (Andreas Kaelber)]

@tomasz86

Or, assuming that you’ve simply downloaded the syncthing.exe executable from the official website, you can just do syncthing.exe -no-console and be done with it . Also, just in case you don’t want to (or cannot) use any 3rd party tools, Starting Syncthing Automatically — Syncthing v1 documentation has detailed instructions on how to set Syncthing up to start automatically and run in background using built-in system tools only.

This is possible, but only works for one user and if he is logged in. I find the EXE and MSI which are available more elegant.

The EXE has the advantage that it does not have to be installed every time there is an update, since the updates runs automatically internally.

https://github.com/Bill-Stewart/SyncthingWindowsSetup/tags

With the MSI this is only possible with a modification with Microsoft ORCA, otherwise the MSI has to be installed every time there is a update. But this would not be a huge effort.

https://github.com/Catfriend1/syncthing-msi/tags

Both are very good packages, since they run as service.