Computing desk
< August 23	<< Jul \| August \| Sep >>	Current desk >

Welcome to the Wikipedia Computing Reference Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is a transcluded archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current reference desk pages.

August 24

Online service to synchronize content on local computers

Is there a--preferably free--service to synchronize the content of a certain folder (incl. sub-folders) on three personal computers? We are working on a joint project and want to have the same files and same organization... but on our local computers (so we can work at hem offline and are in addition more independent of a cloud provider), not just on a cloud.

A solution entitely wihout a cloud (even as a means for synchronization) would be preferred, but I suspect that is even more unlikely to find?! ... Thanks for all suggestions, Ibn Battuta (talk) 08:01, 24 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Perhaps Gitea or similar would fit the bill. --TrogWoolley (talk) 13:18, 24 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Am I right to understand that Gitea is for software development? Do you know if it can be likewise used for just "any" content? (Our files are mainly Word documents, some spreadsheets, some images, etc.) Thanks, Ibn Battuta (talk) 19:22, 24 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

It should be agnostic of the file types, but I doubt the syncing is automatic; as I understand it, each user would have their own copy of a central repository and you'd need to push, pull and merge explicitly. Perhaps git-annex is an easier solution, but you'll still need to issue explicit sync commands. --Lambiam 03:48, 25 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe syncthing is a good option.

It is open-source and works without cloud.

For synchronizing the files it requires that the computers are running at the same time (and run the application). 8esen (talk) 17:34, 25 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@Ibn Battuta The free product Resilio Sync will do this. It used to be BitTorrent Sync. It's not free anymore; I got my license long ago when it was free.

But an open-source offering like SyncThing might be a good choice too. 71.228.112.175 (talk) 14:05, 27 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

When someone changes a file in the synchronized folder, do you want to (a) automatically update everyone else's copy of that file (as soon as both are connected to the same network), or (b) manually decide whether the local changes are *actually* an improvement, and only then allow others to see the updated file, and also manually decide when to pull the changes other people have made visible?

(b) Yes, there are several free distributed version control systems

Any of them can synchronize the contents of a folder to a bunch of computers.

All of them are format-agnostic -- *any* kind of file can be synchronized.

With TortoiseHg or any one of the tools at "Comparison of Git GUIs", the tool shows a list of the new files and the changed files in the folder, and then a person can decide if this is a good time to make those changes visible to others.

They support direct local laptop-to-laptop synchronization (independent of the cloud).

They also support various "free for personal use" cloud-based hosts such as gitlab and gitea.io and other Comparison of source-code-hosting facilities, which support both "private" and "public" repositories.

(a) Yes, there are several free file synchronization, many of them listed at Comparison of file synchronization software, such as Syncthing and Unison (software).

All of them are format-agnostic -- *any* kind of file can be synchronized.

They support direct local laptop-to-laptop synchronization (independent of the cloud).

Many of them support cloud-based hosts.

--DavidCary (talk) 02:22, 29 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]