Post #1907631

2026-01-23 14:04 UTC

Hello again internet friends. What&#39;s the 2026 state of the art for syncing two folders on two different machines. e.g. like Dropbox used to be. It doesn&#39;t have to sync offline, but bonus points if it syncs to my Proton Drive too. I want to be able to change and add content to folders on either machine. There&#39;s no need to recover previous versions as I already back up in a different way. I used to use Unison for this a decade ago, but I wanted something that just works with GNOME. Ideas?

Replies (10)

@zhenech@chaos.social 2026-01-23 14:11

@hughsie Syncthing 💜

Open ##1945050
@artfulrobot@floss.social 2026-01-23 14:19

@hughsie Nextcloud. Super cheap service (hetzner) or self host. Works just like Dropbox used to, plus lots of nice extra features. Syncthing kinda works. I've had loads of issues.

Open ##1945055
@momo@floss.social 2026-01-23 14:31

@hughsie No <3 from me for syncthing. But it is the solution I am using between my NAS, desktop, laptop and phone. It works considerably okayish. UI could be improved though.

Open ##1945056
@rexfuzzle@hub13.xyz 2026-01-23 14:32

@hughsie syncthing. Setup on linux can be tedious, but one's its up it just work. It can keep previous versions if you want. Don't think it does proton drive though

Open ##1945057
@mirek@rodina-sucha.cz 2026-01-23 14:39

@hughsie I am using https://koofr.eu/. It has a Linux client, you can sync more than one folder (I sync two), you can sync more clients. It can sync photos from phone, and it is EU-based. The only con is that it is not open source.

Open ##1945058
@AndiBarth@muenchen.social 2026-01-23 15:01

@hughsie Syncthing works for me.

Open ##1945059
@purpleidea@mastodon.social 2026-01-23 16:00

@hughsie try git-annex if you want some fun Unfortunately the assistant isn't maintained any more and I forget if you can sync a .git/ folder.

Open ##1945060
@vwbusguy@mastodon.online 2026-01-23 18:57

@hughsie I use nextcloud running in my own hardware to do this. If you really want your own open source Dropbox, nextcloud is the way to go. If you just want to sync your pictures to your laptop local wifi, then syncthing.

Open ##1945061
@davet@ieji.de 2026-01-23 21:56

@hughsie syncthing for your local devices and rclone for cloud providers

Open ##1945062
@duncan@social.mac-vicar.eu 2026-01-24 19:03

@hughsie if it is between machines and no cloud (hub) involved but p2p, I used syncthing in the past and it was very good.

Open ##1945063