Comment by frosted-flakes | Hacker News Reader

Comment by frosted-flakes | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

I love Syncthing. I have abysmally slow home internet, so any cloud storage service simply takes too long to sync, and trying to do the first sync of 150 GB takes many weeks. Besides, none of these services (dropbox, onedrive) support ignore files, so they're constantly syncing node_modules folders, etc.

Instead, I have Syncthing set to sync a half-dozen folders (Pictures, desktop, documents, audiobooks, etc.) between my phone, laptop, and desktop over the local network. In total, I sync more than 150 GB of files and it works almost instantly and seamlessly. I use the SyncTrayzor GUI for Windows and the Syncthing app for Android. The Android app occasionally needs to be restarted manually, but that's the only problem I've had with it.

Importantly, I keep local copies of everything on all of my devices, including my phone (256 GB storage plus a microSD card slot which I have yet to need). Lack of support for Syncthing on iPhones is one major reason I stick with Android, even though there's a lot to like about the platform. Once it gets too big I'll move a bunch of old stuff to backup/archive drives, but I don't expect that to happen for a while.

Now, I use Google Photos to selectively share photos with others, and that's it.

Try syncthing-fork [0] on android, it has more features and automated scheduling of sync

[0] https://f-droid.org/packages/com.github.catfriend1.syncthing...

I have observed that Syncthing-fork improvements eventually end up in official repo. Sometimes it takes few months, but it happens.

> Besides, none of these services (dropbox, onedrive) support ignore files, so they're constantly syncing node_modules folders, etc.

Tresorit has that feature and it works great. Aside from data encryption, it was the main reason why I switched from Dropbox.

https://support.tresorit.com/hc/en-us/articles/217103697-Exc...

I use mobiussync on iOS. It's not actually FOSS, but given the absence of something like F-Droid that's the way the iOS ecosystem works.

It works great. And what I really like: when you have already bought the pro version and go to the buying dialog again, they tell you that paying them once is enough and to maybe donate to the SyncThing project itself.

Synthing Lite provides Android with a remote Folder implementation that syncs on demand, and is very useful for things like password files (KeePass).

https://github.com/syncthing/syncthing-lite

Unfortunately, it is not maintained, even if it works and I use it daily.

Dropbox has the ability to ignore files/folders: https://help.dropbox.com/files-folders/restore-delete/ignore... It's not exactly the most user-friendly method, and you have to run a script to do that consistently for generated files/folders like those from npm

That sounds quite cumbersome and inflexible. Why can't they just have a .dropboxignore file?

Even so, Dropbox/OneDrive have other problems, such as only syncing a single folder and not syncing over the local network. Plus it's expensive.

> Why can't they just have a .dropboxignore file?

Seriously though, this can't possibly be THAT much more difficult than fragile attributes on a filesystem node. If someone at Dropbox is reading: please, I beg of you.

Dropbox syncs over the local network.

So they advertise, but I'm a long time dropbox user and every time I needed to sync to a new device in my local network, with all firewalls disabled and lan sync enabled...crickets.

That's good to hear. I guess I assumed it didn't because I'm pretty sure OneDrive doesn't, and that's mostly what I used.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com