Finding a good open source replacement for Dropbox/iCloud/whatever is hard. We’ve been using files for ages, but we don’t really have any good, reliable and widely adopted tools and standards for sharing files between devices. Personally, I’ve been using Nextcloud for file sync for the last few years, but I was never satisfied with its performance and reliability. Syncthing has caught my attention because it promised ease of use, ease of deployment and stellar performance. That sounded almost too good to be true, so I’ve decided to give it a go.

This Syncthing thing turned out to be an amazing piece of software. First, you don’t even need a server in order to use it. It can sync your data between your devices in a direct way, which allows Syncthing to target and empower a much larger audience. I’m also impressed by the error handling flow in Syncthing. It doesn’t try to hide any errors, and it does a good job at explaining what’s going on, and why. Another interesting thing about Syncthing is the fact that it’s operated by a non-profit. It’s not completely server-less, and sometimes your devices need a proxy in order to punch the NAT. In this case, Syncthing will contact a proxy server for help. That may sound as a security issue, but you don’t really need to trust proxies since all traffic is TLS encrypted.