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Cake day: October 7th, 2025

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  • SyncThing is probably my most used bit of software after LibreWolf. I have it installed on all of the computers I use so I have damn near instant, magical access to a bunch of files. It’s how I sync my photos from my Pixel.

    It’s funny, because SyncThing is basically the reason I barely use my iPad these days. While there is a way to make it work with iOS, it’s irritating enough that I just don’t bother, and I don’t use iCloud storage anymore, so it’s a pain in the arse getting documents to it compared to just dropping them in a ST folder that my phone can access.






  • To be honest, they offer different use cases, so no, probably not.

    Syncthing can be used collaboratively, inasmuch as I could share a folder with my wife, for example, but I think the primary use of it is to enable syncronisation of a folder between several personally accessed computers. If you do share with others, you’ll have to share a separate folder, so will end up with a bunch of different folders all being shared with different computers.

    Not to mention that Nextcloud offers other functionality that isn’t necessarily possible with Syncthing. That said, I guess you could save your calendar to a folder in Syncthing and have it sync between devices. So I suppose it could replicate some of the functions.


  • Syncthing

    I think I use Syncthing more than any other tool. I have a bunch of different computers, and all of them are running a Syncthing server, all hooked in to the same folders, all sharing the same documents. I have it running on my GrapheneOS phone too, so my photos folder gets shared as well.

    It can be kinda fiddly to set up the sharing, making sure that you point the shared folders at the right place on your system, but once you’ve got it dialed in it’s invaluable.

    For example; it’s where I keep my Calibre library, so no matter which of my computers I’m on, I can open Calibre, drop a book in, and know that it’ll be ready to load onto my Kobo. I do a weekly radio show, so I keep all of the documentation around that in a folder that I work from locally, whether I’m on my MacBook or Linux desktop.

    The only downside to it is that (as far as I can tell) you can’t store everything on one device to download to others as you need (like iCloud Drive or Dropbox), so if your Syncthing folder takes up 30Gb on your 2Tb server, it’ll also take up 30Gb on your 128Gb phone. So it does mean having to be a little judicious with what you drop in there.

    Basically, I love Syncthing. It means that I have access to everything I need access to, without having to shell out money each month to rent space from a cloud provider. And because I have all of my devices sharing all the folders with all the others, even if one drops offline, the others still get updated damn near immediately.