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!
Oh my goodness! Syncthing without Android leaves me screwed. My whole digital life revolves around it.
FolderSync is a good alternative, more battery friendly too!
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 @[email protected] 's comments are making a lot more sense.
This whole thing is more or less a non-issue then?
not quite
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 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)
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.
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.
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.
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.
OH NO, I hope the fork will continue for a bit otherwise I’m so cooked 🥶🥶🥶
Agreed. Horrible news.
Hoping Syncthing-Fork will continue.
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 synchronizationGod this is sad.
The parts of tech that are useful and elegant are contracting, while subscriptions and ads just get more obnoxious.
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?
Who gives a shit about play? How much do I have to pay you to update it in fdroid still?
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.
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 :(((
