syncthing seems pretty solid to me and I've used it a little, but...

There's pushback on the killer feature that I want. I want to be able to sync photos from my phone and clear them automatically so I don't run out of room. I've been told there are ways to do this but they all feel brittle. Syncthing should be in a position to do this safely. E.g., I have 3 destinations and set a policy that photos can be cleared from my phone when they've reached 2/3.

SyncThing is in the perfect position to do a million different things, but they very strongly believe in not adding anything outside the core features set even if the code needed is already 99% there.

I'm glad they are sticking to the core, because the complexity, fragility and corner cases all make that 1% a worse experience for people who trust it to work reliably. In addition, of the out-of-scope suggestions I've seen, most are actually miles away from being available are completely inappropiate, or are so full of corner cases that they're right to be refused.

On the plus side, the source is all there and it's easy to compile, so that 1% shouldn't be difficult to fill by someone with a little knowledge.

I think a lot of people who want to give up Apple/Google Photos want a reliable replacement that's automated and protected against data loss

Someone needs to seriously create a solid off-cloud personal computing experience. Phones that don't record everything and sell it. How about all these laid off software engineers? Can you guys start something?

There is not one only solution for off-cloud computing, but there are solutions for different services. For photo and video storage instead of Google photo etc you may give a try to Immich.app, surely more suited for this job than Syncthing...

Google and Apple protect themselves against this by not allowing other apps to use these APIs on the OS . I think there are a lot of talented devs trying to make this work

This is easy with Syncthing. Just create a bindirectional sync and move away the data with cron.

i don't believe that will work reliably. cron risks moving a file that is not complete or a race condition where the complete file is moved away before synching verified that it is complete causing it to transfer it again. this can be avoided by only moving files that are a few minutes old but issues like this just make the process more brittle.

i want to use a tool that is reliable, not hack together a custom solution. if i did that, why even bother with syncthing?

That doesn't provide a guarantee that a file is on multiple replicas before deletion from the phone.

You could use Syncthing just to empty the incoming files from your phone (ingest) and then move the photos via cron to a second folder (also Syncthing) which is just shared with the replicas.

Another approach would be to push the files from Syncthing to borg (borgmatic can do replicas) https://torsion.org/borgmatic/

I import files from Syncthing folders into a git-annex on my NAS, where multiple copies are eventually guaranteed via sync to off-site mirrors (remotes).

this!

i solve that by setting ignore delete on the backup destination, but that is an advanced setting hidden away that you have remember to turn on, and once you do and actually delete something from the source you keep getting that warning that the folder is out of sync.

so yeah, i want "backup" as a core feature with the appropriate settings as a default

I use syncthing often and find it incredibly useful. Thanks for the work!

I use it to sync my Obsidian Vault over my different devices and it's perfect. No need of the paying sync solution...

Great tool but has its quirks. Be careful doing cross platform syncing. What's a legal filename on macos/linux may not be legal on Windows (e.g. "?" in a filename) If something slips through it's probably easier just to scrub the broken sync config and start again.

That's a good point. I use Linux where file names are Case Sensitive and the sync to Windows has problems when the files are copied over to an NTFS partition or to my Android phone. However, the rest of the files are updated even though some files have issues syncing.

There is no alert etc generated just a message in the interface that sync is not complete.

Does Syncyhing uses a third party relay, or coordinator server?

https://docs.syncthing.net/users/relaying.html + https://docs.syncthing.net/users/strelaysrv.html

By default, syncthing uses public relays, but thankfully that can be disabled

One reason to use your own relay/discosrv (if anyone wants one) is that some of the public relays/discosrvs are also hosting Tor nodes, so Ubiquity's routers will tell their Admin you're using Tor.

It's important to say that data cannot be decrypted by the relay

100% recommended.