- cross-posted to:
- opensource@lemmy.ml
- cross-posted to:
- opensource@lemmy.ml
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!
You must log in or register to comment.
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
But that is the original Syncthing app @fine_sandy_bottom was talking about the fork that is available in F-Droid
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.
Mine too!
This is sad. Google Play should never hold this weight 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.
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.
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? 😒Realistically I have no where to go and that’s the problem. iOS is even more locked down.
No one says you have to upgrade your phone OS to the latest Android. You can just keep using the Android (and/or Custom ROM) that works.
Sure, but what about security? Not that I haven’t had to use outdated phones before.
And yet Resilio can access a lot more than ST, even without root.
That and the shrinking ability to grant access to device storage.
Isn’t that helping the average users with security in a way that a scam app can’t see much else than itself?
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.
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.
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.
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.
My primary phone belongs to my work.
So it’s not yours. Looks from here that’s the one issue you have to solve before everything else.
If “your” phone belongs to your employer that’s the choice you made. It isn’t yours.
They said somewhere that the play store thing is not the reason, it’s just one of the more recent issues.
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!
funnily that is/was one of the Lemmy creators: Nutomic :)
Plot twist
Thank you for your 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)
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.
Thanks for that. Looks like I’ll be keeping an eye out for replacements just in case.
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
I use bitwarden. Are they not good anymore? Data Breach?
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).
deleted by creator
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 🤣
Here you go https://lemmy.ndlug.org/post/1268531
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?
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.
This is one of the many things I use Syncthing for.
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’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.
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
this is your fault.
I’m a fucking albatross, I know… Or whatever that sailor’s curse bird is I forget. A crested wank.
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
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.
Consider yourself lucky, I feel the pain of seeing the end of years of a loving relationship.
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.
Oh No! This is terrible news. This IMHO is one of the most irreplaceable projects out there. I don’t know of another cross-platform local file syncing app that comes anywhere close to this. I hope that it can continue even if it’s not through the Play Store.
Google seems to be torpedoing open source developments with a number of decisions lately. Maybe they see F-Droid as a threat now that EU is making them open competition? Maybe they just don’t care.
God this is sad.
The parts of tech that are useful and elegant are contracting, while subscriptions and ads just get more obnoxious.
Cool, now I have to find something else to sync my Obsidian vault to my phone. It just worked! Fuck. =____=
As noted elsewhere Syncthing-Fork is still going strong, and a drop-in replacement, it’s on F-Droid.
Do you know if I need to reconfigure my folders?
I guess if the transition is not smooth there is still time for them to adapt something until the very end…
On another hand, it seems like we all deposited all our eggs in one basket huh?
I really can’t think of many Synching replacements… Even when I know there are a few.
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.
Check out resilio.
Same. Rip
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
@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.
Somene opened an issue about it, maybe answers are gonna be posted here : https://github.com/Catfriend1/syncthing-android/issues/1149
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”.
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.
Phones are becoming less and less interesting by the day.
Once they get to the point were all of the options that don’t require incredibly inconvenient sacrifices in functionality to maintain the interesting stuff like a video game console then that will kill interest in the market for me.
If I can’t do anything besides basic smart phone crap I might as well just buy whatever has a good camera once every half decade or so and be done with it. So whatever top end thing Samsung or Apple are putting out.
I’m not sure Google has fully thought through what it means to just be a worse version of what Apple puts out, but with more ads.
I’m almost going full circle now, I’m buying a camera and a Music player to use as separate devices from my phone. Not only smartphones are getting expensive as hell, but the usability is actually getting worse IMHO.
And why is it so fucking awful to setup an automated pipeline to deploy smartphone apps (Android and iOS)?
Smartphone design is mostly a solved problem. Take today’s screens and processors and throw in a few features from the past (removable storage, IR blaster, and headphone jack) and you have a 10-year phone.
I used to get a new phone every year because phone got way better each generation.
My phone is top-tier from 2021 (Z Fold 3), and I have had zero temptation from the newer versions. All they really have is faster processing, but since all apps are designed to run well on budget phones from 5 years ago, there’s no reason to upgrade.
since all apps are designed to run well on budget phones from 5 years ago, there’s no reason to upgrade.
5 years, maybe, but any more is stretching it. And not getting system upgrades anymore is problematic. Unless you own a particular model of phone, de-Googled Android can be hard to come by.
For example, I have a 7-year old Pixel C. By the time Google stopped using system updates for it, I wasn’t wanting them as every release made the device slower and more unstable. After some effort, I was finally able to install a version of Lineage, which itself has problems including no updates in years. There’s a lot of software that is incompatible with my device, both from Aurora and FDroid.
Android isn’t Linux; Google doesn’t care about maintaining backward compatability on old devices, much less performance, and there’s no army of engineers making sure it is because there’s a served running in walled-up closet no one can find.
Google deprecates features and ABIs in Android, apps update and suddenly aren’t backwards compatible.
5 years, maybe. The entire industry is addicted to users upgrading their phones, and everyone gets a piece of that pie. There’s no actors, except perhaps app developers, who have any interest in keeping old phones running. Telecoms upgrade their wireless network - the internet connection in my 8 y/o car, and half its navigation features, died the day AT&T decided to stop supporting 3G; Phone makers make no money if you don’t buy new phones; and maintaining backwards compatibility costs Google money which they’d rather siphon off to shareholders.
My Galaxy Note 8 is a backup phone. It was a flagship when it launched, yeah. But even so, it’s 7 years old, the last update for it was over 2.5 years ago, and it’s still chugging along like a champion.
For the F-droid enabled users, it seems there’s a Syncthing app in the Termux repos:
~ $ apt show syncthing Package: syncthing Version: 1.28.0 Maintainer: @termux Installed-Size: 26.4 MB Homepage: https://syncthing.net/ Download-Size: 7857 kB APT-Sources: https://packages.termux.dev/apt/termux-main stable/main aarch64 Packages Description: Decentralized file synchronizationAlso a fork that has been ongoing for years, syncthing-fork.
Yeah, seems like this is what some people are using. They said you can use Tasker to run it in the background.
So is this the same as installing on the desktop? Run the service and then http to home to configure?
