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Comment by popey | Hacker News Reader

I switched away from Dropbox to Syncthing https://syncthing.net/ a few years ago. Running it on Windows, Mac and Linux (I don't use it on mobile) to keep all manner of files in sync across a bunch of machines. While it doesn't have all the shell integration and end-user friendliness of Dropbox, it also doesn't have the pitfalls like (non-optional) telemetry and constant up-sell.

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Syncthing is so much better than Dropbox. There are no accounts, so it's much easier to set up syncing between multiple machines that may not belong to the same user, or to shared devices. I use it to sync family documents, work documents, for syncing Factorio save games, ...

I've also never had problems with CPU usage (Dropbox often caused high CPU usage in some cases)

The only downside is that background sync on iOS with Möbius Sync doesn't work reliably, but I think that is mainly because of how Apple cripples background processing. It does sync quickly if you manually start the app.

It's a bit challenging for new users (you need to understand machine keys, folder identifiers, ignore lists), but once it's set up it just works.

Möbius Sync is more IAP cancer, unfortunately.

They had to do a lot of extra work to make things work on iOS and it does work. I think it was $6 for a full license?

I happily paid for it and use it to this day.

I'm really happy that Möbius did the job that the Syncthing devs don't want to do themselves. It's the beauty of open source.

The only people who complain about it are those who think "open source" = "I get everything for free".

Closed source proprietary software is not "the beauty of open source".

The SyncThing developers wrote on their website that they don't offer an iOS client because Apple doesn't properly support background processing. It seems that the SyncThing developers don't care about iOS.

But here's the beauty of Open Source: anyone can download the source code and try to get it running on iOS.

Now Möbius found a way to get SyncThing kinda working on iOS, and for a small fee you can install it on your iPhone. The wrapper they built around SyncThing isn't open source, but for Möbius customers that doesn't really matter. They just want something that works. And through the beauty of Open Source, someone was able to build it for them, and they get to make a little money with it!

Yes, many proprietary software developers who don't respect the freedoms of users make money piggybacking (some might say parasitically) on open source software releases.

I'm not sure what this has to do with open source, however. These people aren't even part of the free software community, as they obviously don't care about software freedom.

It sounds like you are confusing open source with copyleft.

Copyleft is a great thing, but it's also fine for things to be open source and not copyleft.

I can use syncthing because of Mobius. If Mobius did not exist, I would either have to pay a bounty to get someone to port Syncthing or use something else. That bounty is more than $6.

You can still port syncthing yourself. Mobius is not stopping you! You'll have to pay Apple $99 a year, and you will have to handle the app store process, and all - but you can do it. Neither syncthing nor Mobius will stop you.

Free software has nothing to do with copyleft. Neither does respecting the freedoms of the user.

I release all my software into the public domain; it's not copyleft at all, but it is free software, and it does respect the freedoms of the user.

That's very nice of you.

Why don't you make a free iOS version of SyncThing? There's a lot of people out there who would appreciate it.

Joining the Apple developer program requires that you dox yourself to Apple, and ties that government identity to device hardware serial numbers. I buy my Apple devices for cash and use each one with a unique disposable Apple ID created with a burner email address and burner prepaid phone number.

This is also one of the reasons I can't pay for IAP cancer - attaching payment methods links identity to the Apple ID and hardware serial number.

IAP cancer? It's a one time payment for an app that does exactly what it says in the description.

Do you expect all developers to give away their apps for free?

> much easier to set up syncing between multiple machines that may not belong to the same user

I always thought this as one of the bigger value-adds of Dropbox; easy cross user management and sharing.

I have used Dropbox and have setup Syncthing for myself and my opinion is that:

Sync thing is relatively easy for the average HN user.

Dropbox is relatively easy for the average non-HN user.

Neither are hard, but Syncthing requires some background understanding of computers

But Dropbox business model requires them to use accounts -- as far as I know you can't set up Dropbox on a shared device without signing into an account. This makes it harder than necessary to set up Dropbox in some scenarios.

Sure, they make it as easy as possible to get started, but "easy to use" for first time users does not mean "easy to use" for people who are willing to spend a few hours to read the docs.

I did the same. Plus also I'm using on my Android phone. Replaces Dropbox completely unless I want to share something with other people. But for that case I usually use Sharing feature from Synology NAS.

Oh I also have shared folders with other people. We used to use it for sharing audio files between podcast presenters, which worked well enough. I have half a dozen folders in my $HOME, shared with different groups of people.

I also have Syncthing installed on my home server which gets backed up. So I have a copy of all my files backed up there, in the event a laptop goes missing or dies.

The only use case I haven't yet covered is an off-site backup of my Syncthing folder, which would be sensible. I just don't know who I can trust with it.

You can install a cron job which compresses, encrypts and rsyncs/rclones your home backup weekly to somewhere. Or you can use BackInTime which can automatically encrypt and only backup changed files, again to a remote location.

A word of caution for anyone planning to use syncthing for backups.

Syncthing is designed as a sync solution but not explicitly for backups. You need some extra setup on top of the defaults for building a reliable backup solution.

If not setup correctly, any "mistakes" from one of the devices will automatically be synced to other devices and cannot be retrieved back.

In the case of a lost/stolen device, make sure you remove the device as soon as possible. If not a bad actor now possessing the device can delete and sync that back to your "back-up" devices too.

Yeah, no, easier to block the telemetry domain than deal with such a huge risk of losing everything

You can try to use the untrusted device functionality, the data is encrypted on the sending device. Word of caution, it is still beta, an in my experience, it is kinda hit or miss, for some folders it worked beautifully, for another, it simply did not sync after the initial configuration.

https://docs.syncthing.net/users/untrusted.html

Syncthing saved my ass last month. My Framework laptop got stolen while I was traveling. I was able to pick up a second-hand MacBook Air, connect it to my introducer, and within a few hours I had all my files back.

I have a Pi with software RAID and two HDDs running Syncthing in my apartment. I rent a cheap Storage VPS from time4vps.com which is untrusted and set as an introducer--meaning, the data is encrypted before it reaches the VPS, and as an introducer it will announce devices to one another. My (former) laptop and an iMac where I do all my work are always in sync. If I need to add a new device, I only have to connect it to the VPS and suddenly all the other devices know of it.

nice setup, do you maintain the project too often? Does it go obsolete due to any update? Or is that just ssh and scp?

It’s surprisingly easy to maintain. I’m not someone that enjoys tinkering with shit like this to be honest, but I didn’t want to put my entire photo collection and what-have-you on Dropbox. Setting up the software raid was difficult. I ran into a tar pit with that, but it turned out the Pi can’t power two drives at once, and a powered USB hub was all I needed. Otherwise, I’ve only sshed into the VPS a handful of times in the year that it’s been running. I haven’t had to to touch Syncthing on the Pi. I probably need to run apt upgrade somewhere, but it’s all working fine.

why not use the syncthing introducer thingy? You concerned they gonna spy on the packets or what?

That's not what an introducer is. It's an easier way of configuring which computers can synchronize with each other, not to be mistaken for a relay.

I use Syncthing too, but only between my local machines. I don't use it for cloud backup because I've never found 2 TB of cloud storage as cheap as Dropbox. If anybody knows of such a vendor I'd love to hear about it.

Edit: I should further qualify that I'm not interested in solutions that would lock me into Apple's walled garden or anybody else's.

If you’re okay with a VPS, Servarica’s 2022 Black Friday offerings (which are still available) has a 2 TB HDD VPS for $48/year.

This looks ideal. Thanks!

Update: Servarica won't take my money.

They won't let you sign up from a VPN. That's annoying but it doesn't affect me. Maybe they're trying to prevent Russian bots from signing up or something. Fine.

But after I gave them a valid credit card and billing address, they still won't take my money. Here's their support response:

"Your IP address does not match with the location you have provided. In order to accept your order your IP address must match the actual location from where you are placing the order."

Ohh kaay. I'm traveling at the moment in a different US state from my billing address. I'm not in Mongolia. And even when I'm at my billing address, my main ISP is Starlink, whose primary ground stations for me are also in a different state than I'm in. So I routinely see banner ads on websites for stores that are 500 miles away.

It's par for the course for non-technical companies to assume that IP geolocation is in any way accurate. But a cloud VPS company should know better.

Fail.

I haven't heard of them before, but those prices are almost _suspiciously_ good. Have you found them to be reliable?

Edit: they're using the older unity logo for their "disk" column. That doesn't inspire confidence in their legitimacy.

I'm using mine primarily as a redundant backup host. So, for that usage, they're perfectly reliable and functional.

However, the machine is absolutely slow. It usually takes a few seconds before SSH brings me to a shell prompt. Web apps I have running on it (basically just Gitea and Vikunja at the moment) can take upwards of 10 seconds to render pages, and it's just me using it. If you just want a storage host, they're fine. Running your website off it? I would probably not recommend.

Reliability, I have not had any issues so far, but I'm hardly a power user. My own personal anecdote is that my backups get validated monthly and, so far, have not had any issues.

I would probably agree that these machines alone would not suffice to make a good Dropbox alternative if what you're storing there isn't backed up elsewhere. I would recommend supplementing with off-site backups to B2 at the very least.

The essential feature that Syncthing as a Dropbox replacement lacks is public sharing.

Although requested by many users throughout the years, the maintainers never considered it seriously.

And I'm glad they didn't. The mere existence of such a feature would make me worry about unintentionally enabling it and exposing private data as a result.

You don’t expose data just by enabling the sharing, because it’s only accessible via a URL containing a hash-like identifier that can’t be guessed. It’s not more realistic than someone guessing your Syncthing password.

Unfortunately this is not true. Your browser likes to send any URLs it comes across to indexing services. If you share the link via Discord or whatever, it'll be scrapped.

This is also just very outside Syncthing's functionality.

> Unfortunately this is not true. Your browser likes to send any URLs it comes across to indexing services. If you share the link via Discord or whatever, it'll be scrapped.

You still have to manually create the URL first. You don't need to worry about accidentally having everything exposed because the feature is enabled.

> This is also just very outside Syncthing's functionality.

The context was specifically "as a Dropbox replacement".

It is a problem if you use Edge: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35703789

This is probably better done via a different app.

I sometimes use croc to do one time file sending.

I use Dropbox for transfers between Linux and iOS, so syncthing doesn’t help. Is there something similar that supports iOS?

The Tailscale cli has a file transfer function that works well between linux and iOS.

Tailscale's Taildrop

What end-user friendliness is missing from syncthing?

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