SyncTrayzor: Windows host for Syncthing. Installer, auto-start, built-in browser, tray icon, folder watcher, and more

Yeah, and to be honest, SyncTrayzor’s probably not even responsible for all of those 11 MiB.

CEF is an embedded web browser, which shares a lot in common with Chrome. If you have a web browser open, I’m afraid (these days) they do take up a lot of memory: rendering web pages is a complex process.

SyncTrayzor chose to go down the route of using an embedded web browser, instead fo re-creating Syncthing’s UI using native controls, because it means the user will see improvements and changes that the Syncthing team make to the UI straight away, without having to wait for me to re-implement them. Syncthing-GTK takes the opposite approach and re-implements everything, which means it likely has a much smaller memory footprint.

Does this program launch as an application or as a service in Windows. (i.e. if I install it, reboot the system, do I need to log back in for it to launch and sync or will it run before I log in?)

It starts as an application.

It starts as an application, on log in. There are a couple of good reasons for this:

  • Multi-user support: supporting multiple users while running Syncthing as a service would require multiple services, and require even more system resources.
  • Portable installations: SyncTrayzor provides a portable version, and that would not work with a service.
  • Most people who think they need a service actually want start-on-login, and think that a ‘service’ is the only way to achieve auto-start.
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Makes sense - I use syncthing to keep servers in sync so running as a service is somewhat essential.

Yeah, that’s a fair use-case.

My assumption is that most people running a server will be running it headless. In this scenario, the easiest way to administer Syncthing is by exposing its web UI to other machines (properly password-protected), rather than RDPing in and using some tray utility. Therefore SyncTrayzor is pretty useless here.

For running Syncthing as a service, see http://docs.syncthing.net/users/autostart.html#run-independent-of-user-login and Syncthing Windows Installer. Pay attention to the warnings about running the service as an unprivileged user!

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Awesome thank you! Will dig through this in depth as soon as I have a few free moments!

Having a tray is actually somewhat useful here - While yes, we primarily run the server headless, when diagnosing an issue it is often useful to launch things locally and having it in the tray makes it easier to quickly open and see if something is going wrong - especially when you need to compare between multiple machines.

Cool!

To be honest, SyncTrayzor probably isn’t a good fit for you here. The stuff that puts it above the other tray utilities are:

  • Embedded web browser
  • Various notifications: synchronization finished, device connected/disconnected
  • File transfer progress stuff
  • Built-in inotify

None of that stuff is useful on a server, and will only use resources unnecessarily. The embedded web browser in particular will gobble 40-odd megs (although I only load it the first that time SyncTrayzor is restored from the tray), while the notifications stuff will increase Syncthing’s resource usage slightly (since I’m occasionally asking it for stuff), and the inotify is useless :stuck_out_tongue_closed_eyes:

It might be fun to make separate Syncthing server service manager (which forces people to do things like not run it as an admin) but that’s another project for another day.

QSyncthingTray popped up recently: I don’t think that does any of the fancy stuff that SyncTrayzor does, and so may be a better fit for you.

Hi! Thank you for Synctrayzor! That’s cool! Please explain why Synctrayzor 1.0.27 need a connection to rad.msn.com?

I bet you your resolve rad.msn.com, it will point to 127.0.0.1, which is the loopback address. So the problem is with your /etc/hosts

Yeah that’s port 8384 which is the port the Syncthing listens on. So it’s connecting to localhost:8384, and your computer’s resolving that to rad.msn.com.

I seem to remember that putting an entry in your hosts file pointing that domain to 127.0.0.1 is a good way of removing adverts from some program, maybe Skype?

Either way, SyncTrayzor will connect to syncthing, to my upgrade server to check for updates, and to github to download updates. Nowhere else.

I’m sorry to trouble you. This is a problem with my /etc/hosts or firewall.

No worries. It’s not a “problem” per se, just some setup which is presenting some slightly confusing information. Just accept the firewall warning and all will be well :smile:

Since the newest version I got this error. Even after a restart it remains.

Please open an issue on github. I’ll need to see your log from around the time that you were resolving conflicts, too.

Do you need the log from syncthing or is there a log from synctrayzor?

The log from SyncTrayzor. If you open up File -> Settings -> Logging, there’s a button to open it.

SyncTrayzor request:

In the GUI window, is there any chance of getting tabbed views of all the Syncthing instances running on a network?

That’s not planned. SyncTrayzor runs and manages one Syncthing instance for the local machine, and all of the functionality it provides is related to managing that single Syncthing instance.

Having multiple tabs for multiple Syncthing instances on different machines is no different to opening a browser window and opening multiple Syncthing instances on multiple tabs, so I don’t see the benefit of trying to replicate what any other web browser does, especially given that I’ll undoubtedly do it worse.

Is SyncTrayzor still being updated? It seems the forum is filled with similar initiatives but I have always used SyncTrayzor in the past. I haven’t used SyncThing for I while and want to set it up again. I believe SyncTrayzor is still the best one to use, especially to watch folders etc.