Announcement by the creator: https://forum.syncthing.net/t/discontinuing-syncthing-android/23002
Unfortunately I don’t have good news on the state of the android app: I am retiring it. The last release on Github and F-Droid will happen with the December 2024 Syncthing version.
Reason is a combination of Google making Play publishing something between hard and impossible and no active maintenance. The app saw no significant development for a long time and without Play releases I do no longer see enough benefit and/or have enough motivation to keep up the ongoing maintenance an app requires even without doing much, if any, changes.
Thanks a lot to everyone who ever contributed to this app!
Fyi the syncthing-fork guy (catfriend1) who’s still updating has a donating button on F-droid via Liberapay. It’s up to you if your financial situation allows you to donate, but the more of us help the remaining developers for their time, in particular those of us that rely so much on their work, the better off we’ll be. Let’s give them a little motivation to keep working on this.
FYI2 syncthing-fork (as written and confirmed in this thread) has an import button for your folders from syncthing Android.
PayPal though. Is there another way to donate to this superhero?
I tried looking around but this humble soul doesn’t have much in the way of receiving donations. I suggest contacting him via https://github.com/Catfriend1 to ask for an alternative and if he gets back to you, share it here for other people who dislike paypal.
Great idea.
I just installed syncthing-fork from f-droid and it worked flawlessly as far as I can tell:
- “Export” in syncthing
- Uninstall syncthing
- Install syncthing-fork from f-droid
- Import in syncthing-fork
I feel the existence of an “export” option in a piece of software is noble in this day and age, and I’m so appreciative of it.
It says “look, I don’t WANT you to go to my competitor, but I’m not gonna try to hold your data hostage to prevent it.”
It’s class, as the Scottish would say.
Open source software doesn’t have a reason to lock you in like proprietary software does :)
More and more proprietary SaaS systems are allowing data exports now, to comply with laws like the GDPR “right to know”. Say what you want about Google and Facebook, but they were the first big companies to start allowing data to be exported before there was any law requiring it - Facebook in 2010 and Google in 2011.
I’ve said for a while that platforms that allow you to easily move make me more comfortable using them, and ironically, more likely to stay around.
Yup, that was easy.
Did it transfer over your folder setups so you don’t need to set it up manually?
Yes
Awesome! So happy transition is so painless.
Update: Export and import worked perfectly. Device name, device ID, and all folders I was syncing got picked up.
Thank you for this :)
Ty! Can confirm this worked for me as well.
I’ve installed it from F-droid but still. Fuck google. They really do need breaking up.
I heavily rely on Syncthing. Does anyone know what the outlook is for Syncthing-fork, or what the likelihood is of someone taking on maintenance of this version?
Yah I mean the notice for the storage access has only been five years. How can they do that.
The way i understand it, this stops maintenance for Syncthing, but Syncthing-fork in fdroid will continue its development and support as usual. Both show if you do a Syncthing search in fdroid. The fork is more up to date with features.
Peachy. Sounds like there’s nothing to worry about then (from a user POV).
Good idea to send donations to the syncthing-fork devs to keep it alive though.
Who gives a shit about play? How much do I have to pay you to update it in fdroid still?
This is sad. Google Play should never hold this much weight in the self hosted community. For Android users dedicated to open source software, F-Droid is the target.
I don’t think SyncThing users would have much issue with the app disappearing from Google. Doing away with Google is the goal.
They’re a cloud company, their mission statement is to eradicate us. It’s like IT trying to stamp out shadow IT.
As much as I want to use F-Droid, my work blocks all third party app stores so it’s either have access to my work stuff on one phone (via profiles) or dual wield two phones.
I lack the patience to dual wield again. It’s very annoying.
Is this your personal phone? If your work were to dictate what you are allowed to install on your personal phone, that’d be a serious overstepping of bounds.
Perhaps you can sneak in f-droid via
adb installand give it app installation permissions via ADB though.My primary phone belongs to my work. I get a stipend every two years that essentially allows me to buy any supported phone I want.
The conditions are that it’s managed by them via MDM and all my work stuff is on the work profile side.
It is a choice I make since it allows me to not carry two phones. I did that for the first two years at my company and it was annoying.
If “your” phone belongs to your employer that’s the choice you made. It isn’t yours.
I’m annoyed to see you getting down voted - I had a similar issue years ago with my work MacBook (couldn’t run a custom WM because any modification to the Finder was blocked without putting the machine into “unsafe” mode).
I love OSS, but without a verifiable way to distribute it large swaths of the workforce won’t be able to use it.
F-Droid is great, but sadly it isn’t enough.
I was today years old when I learned that you can run a custom WM on a Mac.
That’s like…the equivalent of a coca cola soda machine dispensing Pepsi.
And in terms of down votes, I don’t really care too much. It evens out overtime.
Yep, check out yabai.
Thank you but I don’t run a Mac. I used to back in the day. I just know how anal Apple is about people using their devices in any way that they don’t specifically want you to.
The problem is not “Syncthing users” it is the others that we bring along with us.
I already have F-Droid on my phone, but the dozen others that I have promoted Syncthing to over the years do not. This is going to cause a bunch of problems.
This is much more important than what you portray here.
The point you raise reminds me of when Signal dropped SMS support, after my efforts to convert all the non techie people in my life over to it. So sad when it happens…
So sad when it happens…
I don’t follow - do people still seriously use SMS? I for one try to use it as little as possible.
I was reminded of the same thing.
That and the shrinking ability to grant access to device storage. If that becomes an option only on rooted phones (which seems like the directly Google is heading) it will make the audience for such an app much smaller.
If google heads that way I’ll head somewhere else.
To apple? Linux phone experience is just trash.
This is my currently dilemma.
Each year Android becomes more restrictive like iOS with none of the benefits, Rooting becomes harder as more apps tap into the Play Integrity API (and strong Integrity is on the way to kill most workarounds for it), iPhone got a little better but is still locked down as fuck, where the hell do I go to? 😒LineageOS, maybe? Still Android, but (AFAIK) more open to change than standard Android.
I’ve been using custom ROMs for a while now, but the reality is that they can only do so much to stop Android’s ever increasing restrictions.
And the aforementioned Integrity API also detects unlocked bootloaders, meaning this will gradually become more of a problem.
Realistically I have no where to go and that’s the problem. iOS is even more locked down.
And yet Resilio can access a lot more than ST, even without root.
They said somewhere that the play store thing is not the reason, it’s just one of the more recent issues.
Sad day indeed, bitwarden going shady and this.
What did bitwarden do??
I think it was made by mistake. They will more likely remove that dependency
Perhaps the hard dependency was a mistake, but not them moving more and more code to their proprietary library. It appears that their intent is to make the client mostly a wrapper around their proprietary library, so they can still claim to have an open source GPLv3 piece of software. What good is that client if you can only use it in conjunction with that proprietary library, even if you can build it without that dependency?
Instead of open core I’ll call this popular approach “open skin”.
mostly a wrapper around their proprietary library
I’m not familiar with exactly what Bitwarden are doing, but Nvidia are doing something similar to what you described with their Linux GPU drivers. They launched new open-source drivers (not nouveau) for Turing (GTX 16 and RTX 20 series) and newer GPUs. What they’re actually doing is moving more and more functionality out of the drivers into the closed-source firmware, reducing the amount of code they need to open source. Maybe that’s okay? I’m not sure how I feel about it.
That says that it is a bug.
It says the build error is a bug, not the inclusion of proprietary code.
To be fair, the project page says this:
The password manager SDK is not intended for public use and is not supported by Bitwarden at this stage. It is solely intended to centralize the business logic and to provide a single source of truth for the internal applications. As the SDK evolves into a more stable and feature complete state we will re-evaluate the possibility of publishing stable bindings for the public. The password manager interface is unstable and will change without warning.
So there are two ways this can go:
- they complete the refactor and release it as FOSS
- they complete the refactor and change the clients to be proprietary
I’m going to stick with them until I see what they do once they complete the refactor.
Ahh those fuckers.
I don’t get it.
How is that a problem to people wanting to work on or work with Bitwarden? Or am I misunderstanding the wording on it?
It just seems to say that you cannot rip this SDK out to use it on something else. Which makes sense as far as an internal library goes, at least on the surface?
It doesn’t make sense for an internal library for an open source application, it that case it’s not open source.
OH NO, I hope the fork will continue for a bit otherwise I’m so cooked 🥶🥶🥶
Agreed. Horrible news.
Hoping Syncthing-Fork will continue.
Literally set up a home Nas and syncthing last week.
What’s a good alternative for Android?
Syncthing-Fork (F-Droid)
Is it well supported with a long term roadmap? Or are there other software one should consider for a 12month range commitment
Not sure, but it is still active with like 80 contributors. It’s much the same as the original with a couple of extra features and more languages, so transition should be minimally painful, maybe even export - import level. I’ve been using it for years as I saw the original wasn’t very active, but they’re pretty much (essential) feature complete and stable, which is good. Apparently, google thinks that’s bad.
There is an android native GUI for syncthing in fdroid that looks like its still maintained: https://github.com/Catfriend1/syncthing-android?tab=readme-ov-file
Somene opened an issue about it, maybe answers are gonna be posted here : https://github.com/Catfriend1/syncthing-android/issues/1149
@paperd @chaospatterns Yeah, this is the one I’m currently using. I have my pictures automatically synced to my laptop, and (in the other direction) an audiobooks directory on my laptop automatically synced to my phone.
I can only hope the company makes the iOS client (Möbius) decides they need syncthing to continue and decide to get behind it.
As I recall, they use Syncthing as a solution in their business, this would be a big-break for them.
It says “unlimited file sync is a $5 in-app unlock” so I’m guessing they can make money. Main problem is the apple developer fees that will eat the profit of the first 25 sales each year
Maybe I’m misremembering, but I thought they used Syncthing as part of a business not directly related to Möbius - as a vendor supplying data management solutions to other companies. I suspect Möbius came out of need for their clients.
I can picture the vendor website in my head, just wish I could remember who it was for sure.
I would eagerly pay for syncthing, it’s that important to me. I keep hundreds of gigs moving around using it. It’s on my annual donate list already, but clearly that’s insufficient.
Maybe the Syncthing-Fork dev will keep it going.
iOS is already more restricted on app sandboxes, and Möbius can handle it in the paid version.
On Android, Resilio somehow has more file access than Syncthing, even without root (it can read/write to either SD card root, while Syncthing can only write to a subfolder of SD0, and can’t write anywhere of an external SD). So there’s something going on.
deleted by creator
Out of the loop. What is this app for?
It’s a very convenient app to sync files between your devices. It’s cro-platform and doesn’t require any registrations.
Many people (me included) use it to sync their password databases.
It’s a very stable, reliable, local, cross-platform file syncing that is pretty easy to set up. Basically, it allows you to have a shared folder (or folders) on multiple devices without using Google Drive, OneDrive, iCloud, etc.
Syncing things
Syncthing is application that sync folders across devices. This was the mobile version
Oh boy, just wanted to get into it. Damn sad, not of course understandable, the developers are only humans as well
The way i understand it, this stops maintenance for Syncthing, but Syncthing-fork in fdroid will continue its development and support as usual. Both show if you do a Syncthing search in fdroid. The fork is more up to date with features.
Ah thanks for the info.
I’ve always just used Folder Sync + an ssh server, if people are looking for alternatives.
That takes a lot more effort.
With Syncthing, I don’t have to setup a server, poke holes in my firewall/expose ports, etc.
Plus Foldersync is way harder on battery, I’ve experimented a lot.
And I’ve used Foldersync since at least 2010 - it’s great, really has it’s uses.
Plus Foldersync is way harder on battery, I’ve experimented a lot.
This is very configuration dependant. With an aggressive schedule checking a large number of files, it certainly can use a lot of battery; but I’ve had it setup to sync my entire device to my server a couple times a day, while also monitoring/syncing images immediately on creation/change. It doesn’t even register on androids battery usage monitor as it uses so little power.
Anyway; just listing an option for people to look at
It definitely gets better once it’s all caught up.
But it’s still much harder on battery than ST when folders have changes.
It’s kind of not Foldersync’s fault, it’s really because of the protocols - it’s all connection-based, and FS has to compare each file at sync time.
Syncthing keeps an index so it knows what files have changed. Very different tools with different use-cases and approaches.
I used FS for years until I found ST, and had to do a lot more tweaking to get sync to work the way I wanted with FS. FS doesn’t have sync conditions like ST, so I had to use Macrodroid to trigger it when on WiFi, for example.
FS can be a solution, it’s just a lot more work for anything beyond basics.
Oh my goodness! Syncthing without Android leaves me screwed. My whole digital life revolves around it.
Oh don’t worry to much, mine too: If there wasn’t an alternative for syncthing on android, I might have kept it on lifesupport :)
What’s the history behind this? Why could the changes be done upstream, necessitating a fork?
Sounds like the original maintainer is tired of maintaining it, and the amount of community support wasn’t enough to justify continuing to put in the effort. And then Google’s packaging process pushed it over the edge, hence retiring the project.
The fork is just another person deciding to take up maintenance of the project.
I know that part.
The other fork has existed for a long while.
What is this alternative of which you speak?
Syncthing-fork. Both show if you search for Syncthing in fdroid. Since imsodin seems to be OP Dev maintainer for Syncthing, i think he is referring to the fork.
Ooh.
Thanks.
I’ve been running the fork for a long time but somehow figured it was a soft-fork and maybe not really viable without upstream development from syncthing.
Now @imsodin@infosec.pub 's comments are making a lot more sense.
This whole thing is more or less a non-issue then?
not quite
Only one I can think of is Resilio, but it’s hard on RAM and battery for large folders.
And I don‘t know what‘s going on with them. There weren’t any updates for years, now there is a design overhaul, no new features and suddenly they want me to register. Duck
It’s been forever since I looked at resilio so this may be an unfair appraisal but… I seem to remember it’s one of those OSS projects that feels a lot more like free tier commercial software. Do you think that’s the case or nah?
Honestly just a dumb rsync client would be enough for me.
Mine too!
