What is Syncthing?
Syncthing is a small application that automatically syncs directories between any number of machines. For this, it uses encrypted PtP traffic, so no central server is needed. There are discovery and relay servers, but they aren’t necessary. You can also define ignore rules and limits per device.
With this, you can ditch cloud storage, improve redundancy and keep local disk speeds
I mainly use it to keep my projects on all my devices in sync, allowing me a seamless working experience. But it can also be used for notes, photo libraries, etc.
My setup for project syncing
I want my projects to be accessible on every one of my machines with local disk speeds, so I have the following setup. Some devices only sync specific projects to spare disk space and comply with uni rules.
The most important component is my homeserver, which is always on. It kinda acts as a server, which always has the complete current state and helps the clients to sync when nobody else is online.
Usecase: Onset
I used syncthing twice as an onset VFX supervisor. As an onset VFX supervisor, one of my responsibilities is to capture VFX relevant data like: HDRis, 3DScans and camera data. It’s nice to already process and back up this data. Syncthing makes this possible. Different devices can take on different tasks and exchange the results.
- laptop offloading images
- ipad 3d lidar scans
- ipad taking notes
- ipad presenting the data
- remote pc processing the scans
- homeserver doing snapshots and backups
The IOS App Synctrain sadly doesn’t work in the background, so you need to have the app opened for the sync process to run. This seems to be a limitation of IOS.
Ignore Patterns
It doesn’t want every project on every device, for example excluding private projects on the uni pc. Syncthing has ignore patterns for this use case.
!/UniProject
!/PersonalProject
!/PortfolioWebsite
!/Showreel
*
To reduce the disk requirements, I exclude different file types on a limited space, like the iPad.
!/UniProject
*.tif
*.exr
*
Things to consider
It’s not a backup
It gives you some way of redundancy, but it’s not a backup, because everything faulty gets automatically synced. It has file versioning built in, but it’s not 100% bulletproof, so I choose a more reliable option like automatic filesystem snapshots and offsite backups to be sure.
Network Speed
Network speed can be a problem. When there are a lot of things happening and you need a specific file on a device, you often have to wait for the whole sync to be done. This happened to me a couple of times, where other files were blocking a small PDF from being synced. I solved it by switching from Wifi to LAN as the connection method.
Syncthing doesn’t need internet access to work. So sometimes I do a direct LAN connection between two devices to sync.
What would be nice
I think it would be great to allow you to mount the sync share like a nfs share, so you can access remote files.
The IOS App Synctrain actually has a functionality like this. It allows you to browse and view files that are not on your device through the app. I think it would be great if the desktop syncthing app would allow something similar. It brings solutions to some key problems:
- not having to download everything -> save disk space
- faster sharing, because you can already access files before sync has completed
- possibly faster remote file access compared to the cloud because you have peer to peer networking
There seems to be an option called strada allowing you to do these things, but for my needs, it’s too expensive and I don’t like a monthly payment to sync files between my devices.