This is a simple guide on how to synchronise contacts and calendars between a desktop operating system (Windows, macOS, Linux) and Android relying on a combination of Syncthing and Radicale. The main goal and idea is to have Radicale running on every system locally, so that you can connect with it even when there is no network connection available. This applies to both desktop operating systems and Android as well. Desktop: Install and run Radicale following instructions from https://radical...
Regrettably, I think Syncthing is a cool concept, but in practice it’s just really battery heavy and difficult to configure. In theory, I could synchronize my passwords and contacts and gallery with it, but in practice…
Things you want to uploaded in one direction, such as photos you want to delete upon synchronization, basically cannot be uploaded that way
Constantly updated things like a password file or a contact list, must have the app running across multiple devices in order to correctly synchronize - and Syncthing chews through battery
You don’t have the option to make anything “cloud only” with Syncthing either
Basically: if you want resilient bi-directional synchronization, Syncthing is great. But for everything else, I’ve had to assemble a patchwork of options (Ente, Bitwarden, Filen being my go-tos).
What issues did you have with one-way photo syncing? I actually do that right now and it works just fine. I set it to send-only from my phone, and after I ingest them into my Immich server, I delete them on my phone and the synced copy gets removed from the server, leaving only the ones ingested into Immich.
It probably helps you’re using Immich! But I would even be nervous with that configuration, because I wouldn’t necessarily be sure whether something had successfully uploaded because there’s no interface to really tell me so. Syncthing discourages using it for backup aka unidirectional synchronization, so your configuration isn’t exactly conventional…
If I did get into advanced server management, I would probably stick to Ente, but presently they already have my money and I’ve found a reasonable way to back up photos not just from my device to a cloud, but from their cloud to a desktop computer - which sounds like it would result in, basically, what you have already, minus the stress of managing a second sync device, and possibly with far less battery drain
It probably helps that it’s a manual process. When I ingest stuff into Immich, I make sure that everything is synced properly first. I don’t have anything fancy with like ingesting and then deleting photos automatically, I definitely wouldn’t trust that. Hopefully Immich declares their photo syncing stable soon and I can switch to that.
Regrettably, I think Syncthing is a cool concept, but in practice it’s just really battery heavy and difficult to configure. In theory, I could synchronize my passwords and contacts and gallery with it, but in practice…
Basically: if you want resilient bi-directional synchronization, Syncthing is great. But for everything else, I’ve had to assemble a patchwork of options (Ente, Bitwarden, Filen being my go-tos).
What issues did you have with one-way photo syncing? I actually do that right now and it works just fine. I set it to send-only from my phone, and after I ingest them into my Immich server, I delete them on my phone and the synced copy gets removed from the server, leaving only the ones ingested into Immich.
It probably helps you’re using Immich! But I would even be nervous with that configuration, because I wouldn’t necessarily be sure whether something had successfully uploaded because there’s no interface to really tell me so. Syncthing discourages using it for backup aka unidirectional synchronization, so your configuration isn’t exactly conventional…
If I did get into advanced server management, I would probably stick to Ente, but presently they already have my money and I’ve found a reasonable way to back up photos not just from my device to a cloud, but from their cloud to a desktop computer - which sounds like it would result in, basically, what you have already, minus the stress of managing a second sync device, and possibly with far less battery drain
It probably helps that it’s a manual process. When I ingest stuff into Immich, I make sure that everything is synced properly first. I don’t have anything fancy with like ingesting and then deleting photos automatically, I definitely wouldn’t trust that. Hopefully Immich declares their photo syncing stable soon and I can switch to that.