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Comment by WJW | Hacker News Reader

Dropbox (or any of the other syncing apps) as a syncing mechanism for other stuff is underrated IMO. I personally have notes, password manager database and a budget app database synced between devices and the amount of value I've derived from having everything automatically sync between devices is huge.

I wish more apps would take the wide availability of "magic syncing folders" into account when designing their data storage. (I know many VC funded apps would prefer to keep the data in house so it can be monetized, but there is less excuse for open source tools)

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I don't like to involve cloud apps in my workflow because there is no guarantee when what will change and then break my workflow. I currently self host a simple note server[1]. Now cloud apps can help me sync these notes across my devices but I would rather prefer mapped drive than cloud sync.

I take notes from my mobile/desktop browser address bar or simply edit the files directly. No dependencies, no cloud storage, only files and no one can ever access them but me. Works like a charm for me.

[1]: https://github.com/quaintdev/pinotes

I agree but there's no great cross-platform syncing solution yet, to my knowledge. Dropbox dropped all linux support except ext4, which is limiting. GDrive and OneDrive don't have a Linux Client. Nextcloud is neat, but still not very well supported (eg, by android apps).

The result is I'm using a mishmash of all those, and keep forgetting what is synced where.

For Google Drive there is a solution for Linux [0]. I actually really like it, it's not automatic, but that's not really a problem, because you can make it automatic with some bash and crontab.

[0] https://github.com/odeke-em/drive

I agree with you. The Dropbox move turned my previously smooth workflow into a much more convoluted system.

For GDrive (I use that for work), [insync](https://www.insynchq.com/) is not 100% perfect but was worth the one-time price.

I use Odrive as my syncing “frontend” and works great even with Linux

I have syncthing running on desktop, laptop, and phone. Only downside is no iOS app but that's more an apple ecosystem issue really.

I've been using pcloud on Linux, and I've found it to be fast and easy. Comes with a lot more free storage than Dropbox. I believe you do have to be willing to install their client.

I am surprised you didn’t mention syncthing!

Is it because you’re assuming a cloud backup is necessary component of syncing solution? In that case, you can just designate one of your synced devices to keep backups to S3/B2 :D

I think dropbox (or any “magic folder” sync) is great as well.

YouNeedABudget used to do this and then “upgraded” to use their own proprietary service that charges $X/month.

I think it’s not just the data monetization, but that frequently data sync is the only feature that requires ongoing services. So if I write software and want to charge a monthly service fee, then data sync is where I can force the service.

Companies can do whatever they like, but jerk companies will make poor designs that require their own magic sync. Smart companies should fall back to a sync folder to allow self-run and just charge me for software.

YNAB is the budget software I was referring to. I just never upgraded to the SAAS version and it still works fine.

I did that for a while, but 32 bit apps no longer run on mac. Phone works great though.

“magic folder” sync always meant https://syncthing.net for me. Once set up it syncs in LAN, over slow connections, with lots of changed files, handles concurrent syncs, hundreds of GBs of data etc. – it's great and becoming better day by day.

Dropbox is a dumb solution to note syncing. It works for me for now but I miss not having to sort conflicts manually.

Why do you have conflicts?

If you modify a file from both ends then a program may not know how to merge the changes.

How is this specific to dropbox though? Any storage backend will have those issues?

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