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Comment by akvadrako | Hacker News Reader

Syncthing doesn't do smart sync. The library of stuff I want available is larger than can fit on my phone.

Syncthing has ignore files which can be used to selectively not sync certain files or folders per device. I'm not familiar with Dropbox's smart sync, so if it's like a transparent on-demand sync then no, Syncthing doesn't have that.

Maybe it's possible to implement that as an extra app though, without even touching Syncthing. Android seems to have some concept of virtual file systems provided by apps so perhaps one could on-demand un-ignore files then block until they're available. (But yeah, that's definitely more than a quick hack.)

The syncthing ignore file works exactly like picking what folders to sync in drop box, just in a text file instead. (and the ability to use file globs if you want)

That isn't a usable UI on Android.

In Dropbox, if I want a file I haven't synced yet, I just browse to it and open it. I can also mark folders as available offline.

Does Syncthing support manual on-demand downloading? What I'd really like is a way to browse files and download only what I need without eagerly syncing everything all the time.

I'm using Seafile for that now, but I don't like that it needs hosting and I'd love to switch to something P2P and get rid of the server.

It's no longer maintained I think but probably still works: they did have Syncthing Lite which functions like a traditional client - https://f-droid.org/packages/net.syncthing.lite - https://github.com/syncthing/syncthing-lite

Interesting thanks. So the protocol supports it, but the official app doesn't expose functionality shaped the way I want. I'll have to see if I can get that lite app running on PC somehow.

I have multiple top-level syncthing folders to work around that. Different machines get different sets of folders.

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