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?
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.
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.
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.
Realistically I have no where to go and that’s the problem. iOS is even more locked down.
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.
And yet Resilio can access a lot more than ST, even without root.
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…
I was reminded of the same thing.
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.
They said somewhere that the play store thing is not the reason, it’s just one of the more recent issues.
They’re a cloud company, their mission statement is to eradicate us. It’s like IT trying to stamp out shadow IT.
deleted by creator
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.
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 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.
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 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.
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.
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
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.
Mine too!
I am not the creator, funnily that is/was one of the Lemmy creators: Nutomic :)
I am a syncthing co-maintainer that kept the android app on life support since a while.Thank you for all of your hard work!
THANK you for the hard work! Your app is part of my phone photo and appdata backup.
Side question: Will you continue with a fork for f-droid?
As the statement says I wont - it will be fully discontinued. This statement applies to the official app only. It doesn’t say anything about other apps or forks - any existing once can and hopefully will continue to exist. Also all the code is free.
Sad to hear but my point still stands: Thank you very much for your work.
Any recommendation for an Android fork or any other way to make it work on mobile without an app (if that’s even possible)In that case, could the syncthing-fork app be renamed to syncthing, now that it’ll probably be the main Android app for Syncthing?
Thank you for your work!!!
funnily that is/was one of the Lemmy creators: Nutomic :)
Plot twist
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?
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.
Yah I mean the notice for the storage access has only been five years. How can they do that.
Hoping it remains viable for a long time without updates. Syncing my KeePass database is really key for me. I need to fluidly add and read passwords from at least 3 devices.
With today’s BitWarden drama, I planned to use KeePass with SyncThing for like an hour before seeing this :(((
Got any links to the bitwarden drama? I missed it.
Bitwarden’s last update made the iOS categorically worse and impacted the Pin unlock functionality on Linus desktop. Guess I’m migrating to Proton’s offering along with the rest of their suite. Hope they don’t go down the enshittification rabbit hole anytime soon.
That sucks. But I think this is specifically about their open source licensing.
Hope they don’t go down the enshittification rabbit hole anytime soon.
Apparently they’re transitioning to a non-profit business model
Thanks for that. Looks like I’ll be keeping an eye out for replacements just in case.
I use bitwarden. Are they not good anymore? Data Breach?
Here you go https://lemmy.ndlug.org/post/1268531
I too use Bitwarden, self-hosted. What’s up with Bitwarden? I haven’t heard anything (other than some of the Keypass master race sometimes throwing dirt at it).
Desktop Bitwarden app is not open-source anymore.
Thanks. I guess it’s about time for me to start looking at being part of the master race crowd then. I appreciate the link.
They couldn’t take the heat in Github 🤣
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.
Syncthing-fork on fdroid.
This is one of the many things I use Syncthing for.
Is webDAV not good enough for that? I use keepass via webDAV feature of the nextcloud (I know some think it is bloated) but I guess there are other lightweight webDAV solutions…
I’ve used both. NC android app doesn’t sync and one needs to host the entire platform. When using generic webDAV one still needs a dedicated sync solution.
I self host NC and still prefer SyncThing for keeping my KeePass database updated and fresh across devices.
I see, my app that I use for keepass has integrated webDAV sync where I can point it to a keepass file on the webDAV server (strongbox iOS) I just thought android keepass apps should have such feature as well.
The iOS app of NC is slow as well, and not good enough for using to sync keepass files, but the Linux app seems to be good enough.
And yea, just learned, that sync thing apparently works without a server but all P2P? That is 100% killer feature 😃👌🏻
IIRC Keepass2Android does have that feature.
Fair point. Does it cache the database for when one’s of the grid?
Yup!
The NC app (and DAVx5 contacts and calendar sync for that matter) do provide a WebDAV mount point on android so I suppose I could access content directly. And someone mentioned there’s DAV support in some clients as well. Perhaps I’m just overly worried about losing access, with Syncthing the files are on my device no matter if my self-hosted home solution or internet goes down.
But the no-server cloud function of Syncthing is absolutely a killer feature. And very important as a simple and easy privacy solution for inexperienced users IMO. I was hoping for a better windows solution, not a deprecation of device support.
Speaking of servers, I also run a Syncthing server so I can sync files without having two user devices online at the same time. Syncthing natively support encryption at rest (files on disk) so it satisfies my absolute demand of never storing unencrypted personal files on a server. Even if the server is disk encrypted, in my own home and only accessibly through VPN…
Encrypted password database in encrypted storage on an encrypted storage only accessibly by encrypted connection via an encrypted connection… Maybe I’m overdoing it. Who am I kidding, I’d get a rottweiler to guard my home server if I could.
OH NO, I hope the fork will continue for a bit otherwise I’m so cooked 🥶🥶🥶
Agreed. Horrible news.
Hoping Syncthing-Fork will continue.
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
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.
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.
Thank you for this :)
Ty! Can confirm this worked for me as well.
Yup, that was easy.
Just got into using Syncthing for my home network, was thinking I should add it to my phone. Makes sense it dies the instant I consider it
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.
Lol, I was also looking at installing it last weekend.
I guess this thing is on the same connection as my stock choices.
My advice is to be less like me
It seems to be working for other people
this is your fault.
I’m a fucking albatross, I know… Or whatever that sailor’s curse bird is I forget. A crested wank.
Consider yourself lucky, I feel the pain of seeing the end of years of a loving relationship.
God this is sad.
The parts of tech that are useful and elegant are contracting, while subscriptions and ads just get more obnoxious.
Does anyone know why it was forked and the fork got all the improvements while the official app is in the exact same state of when it was launched years ago?
It was because all the proposals got rejected?
Because if he rejected all the improvements I don’t really understand why he’s saying “nobody wants to help development”
It’s all in the open, you can go dig around for reasons. As usual there wasn’t a single simple one. Neither was it some kind of complete fallout, we e.g. collaborated on translations and I have been in contact around various things with the one that forked.
