Edit: Thanks for all the suggestions. I’m going to try sticking with syncthing and try the fork of the UI and see if that keeps everything working.
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I want to sync files between my linux PC and Android phones (mostly for Obsidian notes).
Can anyone recommend a good real-time sync?
I’ve been trying syncthing, but despite turning off battery optimization for the app, it rarely sees the phone as connected. I don’t want to have to remember to check syncthing every time I edit a note.
I use resilio for syncing between PCs but it looks like it has a high battery usage on the phone, as if it is frequently polling for changes.
I use FolderSync for occasional scheduled syncs (e.g. updating my MP3s from the server to my phone), but a scheduled sync either is frequent enough to affect battery or it risks sync conflicts.
Cloud services such as OneDrive, Dropbox and Google Drive don’t show up as big battery drains, so I assume that they use change notifications from the OS instead.
Are there any real-time 2-way sync apps for phone that don’t have big battery drain and are not for cloud providers?
I’d really recommend giving Syncthing a second chance, twist a few knobs in the settings until it works. I’ve used it for years with barely a hitch.
Do you use it on a phone too? I did find it tricky to set up (more options than I really need, and the phone app settings don’t really work unless you select “Web UI”, which is really strange), but I didn’t mind the setup if I could then leave it alone and it works. Ideally I want to set this up on other family phones, so I can update notes and they appear everywhere.
It’s the main way I sync my phone.
I have a different app for photos, but SyncThing on my phone, and on my desktop, and again on one of my home servers, do most of the download and data syncing.
Occasionally I’ll have to manually run SyncThing; I’m not certain that Android is reliably starting it after reboots, but for the most part it just does it’s thing really reliably. There is a lag; it can take a few minutes for changes to sync - it’s not immediate. For me, this isn’t a problem, and I’d rather that than a battery suck, so I haven’t messed with it.
I keep multiple phones in sync, with hundreds of gigs synced every day.
Have you found a way to get rid of the notification and keep Syncthing running in background?
Just hide it in your OS notification settings
But in this way I don’t get any notification if something goes wrong
For me that can be more specific. If I select the offending notification (either in the settings for notifications history or directly in the notification area) I can disable that specific type of notification. For instance deals from Amazon or eBay or something like connection established from tailscale.
Are you sure that there are different type of notification for Syncthing? Have you disable the persistent one and still received a failed sync one (or something else)?
Yeah, phone to laptop, and I recently synced all backups and files from an old phone to a new one, too. Once you have the computer setup, you can basically connect phones by reading its QR code.
If the official Syncthing Android app is giving you a hard time, maybe try Syncthing-fork? IIRC that’s only the daemon and web GUI wrapped as an app. But I’ve used the main app only for the past few years.
I have the phones connected, but the app just decides to disconnect and stay that way until I check it. I’ll give that fork a try, thanks!
Perhaps your phone has extra aggressive battery saving settings that kill the background process? The official Syncthing has a setting to run as a persistent service, which always helped me.
Otherwise see if you can make system exceptions for the app to run in the background, and allow it to auto-sync. It’s been a while since I used the forked app, buy it did help me out on a device where the official didn’t work for me.
Hope this helps.
I prefer Syncthing-fork for some more straightforward configuration. Mainly the three button options equating to “follow the run conditions, damnit”, “run damnit”, and “stop damnit”
Thanks. I’m giving that a try!
I use LocalSend between all my devices (work, personal, etc). Mac, Linux, Android, Winblows. All. It’s fast, effective, lightweight. FOSS.
If this is mostly for Obsidian, use the community plugin and a self hosted CouchDB.
https://github.com/vrtmrz/obsidian-livesync
I’ve found it quite good.
2 more cents :)
I’ve been using syncthing for a while now, on different devices, and the only unreliability I’ve run into is with android killing syncthing to save battery life, which is kinda hilarious, considering all the vendor- and google-provided crap they happily waste battery on (I don’t use it, but for what I’ve heard iOS is even worse in this regard).
Specifically, I have a samsung tablet where, no matter how much I tinkered with system settings, synchthing would only run if I manually launched the app or while the tablet was charging (BTW I still use that same tablet, but it now runs LineageOS and syncthing works flawlessly).
All this is to say, you should probably look into system settings and research ways to convince your OS to do what it’s supposed to rather than tinkering with syncthing itself.
I’ve used Sycthing but it was somewhat finicky.
