Keeping files in sync between multiple iOS, MacOS, Windows and Linux devices

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Keeping files in sync between multiple iOS, MacOS, Windows and Linux devices

I am trying to find a way to keep some files in sync between my iPhone, iPad, MacBook Pro, a Windows computer and my Linux laptop.

And I want it to not use a public cloud provider, such as Google Drive, Dropbox or OneDrive.

So, here is what's going on.

I am using an app called SwiftoDo for my todo list. It's a Todo.txt client and stores all my Todos in a plain text files. The app supports sync via the iOS Files app and Dropbox directly.

I have a Nextcloud server running at home. I put my Todo.txt files on the Nextcloud server and set up the sync provider to be the Files app, browse to my Nextcloud folder and it shows my Todos. I can happily sync my tasks between all devices for a few hours. Then at some point, no matter how much I refresh the app, all my iOS devices stop getting tasks that I have added on any of my Mac/Windows/Linux computers.

So, since I have a Synology NAS, I set up Synology drive. That experience was even worse. SwiftoDo will load my Todo list and anything I add to it on my iOS device will show up on my desktop, but the other way around does not work. I add stuff on my desktop and I see the Sinology Drive client sync the file, but SwiftoDo never shows the new tasks.

I was going to try iCloud Drive, but there is no way to access iCloud Drive from Linux that I have found.

I need a reliable way to sync a file across devices.

Does anyone have a solution for this?

iPhone XR

Posted on Jun 26, 2022 8:38 AM

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Answer 1

Jun 26, 2022 8:46 AM in response to amp68

You’ve done your homework! I can’t think of a solution that doesn’t use a public cloud service, but of the ones you won’t use DropBox seems to be the most reliable and most secure. I use it instead of iCloud for most of my content. I’ve found that the Google Drive Mac app “breaks” iCloud photo sync to Macs, and OneDrive is too finicky and annoying.

For your higher level business need I use EverNote, which syncs across all of those devices except perhaps Linux (never tried it on Linux, it might work) but its web front end is excellent.

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Answer 2

amp68 Author

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82 points

Jun 26, 2022 9:05 AM in response to Lawrence Finch

The only thing I am trying to sync right now is one folder with my todo.tx files in it.

My problem with Dropbox is it's not end-to-end encrypted. And there is a limit to the number of devices you can sync before you need to pay. I don't want to pay $10.00 a month to sync a 10 kilobyte text files across multiple devices.

I think this is an iOS issue and how iOS doesn't let stuff run in the background. That's why I think that Nexcloud works for a few hours and then just stops.

I was originally going to use Syncthing to do this (https://www.syncthing.net) and bought and installed the Mobius Sync client on my iOS devices. It doesn't integrate with the Files app, but it does do background sync. But its background sync is VERY random, and after about a week iOS just kills the process and it stops syncing. I don't want to mark off 10 todos as complete and then go home, fire up my Mac and see them all still there.

I could also get a subscription to the various Todo apps out there, such as Todoist, Remember The Milk, TickTick and others, but the going price for a subscription seems to be between $30 and $60 a year, depending on the app.

I could use the iOS Reminders app, but accessing that on Linux is a bit of a PITA. I got it to load in Thunderbird through CalDAV, but it has a bunch of proprietary fields in it that are not part of the CalDAV spec. So, if I am on Linux and add a reminder on my task in Thunderbird, none of my iOS devices will remind me to do a task. And if I add a reminder on iOS, they don't show up in Thunderbird.

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Keeping files in sync between multiple iOS, MacOS, Windows and Linux devices

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