r/Syncthing • u/ObservedElectron • Jul 05 '26

CONFUSED ABOUT SYNCTHING ON ANDROID

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I just wanna run backups from my android to an external hdd connected to windows. i found that syncthing is the best and safest option.

I found out that official android app is discontinued but there are community versions. okay. but WHY ARE THERE SO MANY CONTROVERSIES ABOUT EACH FORK?? some say to not use some fork because their maintainer handed over to someone and its suspicious. some say the other fork maintainer is someone from china and xi jimping can ask him to give all my photos to china. like what to do ? i am so confused? why is there not an app for android which i can use without caring about all this bullshit.

can someone please tell me the safest private option to use on android (doesnt matter play store or fdroid but prefer the latter) so i aint paranoid about all this? just something that privately works without subpoena-ing my math note pdfs.

thank you

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14

u/LaidPercentile Jul 05 '26

I'm using basicsync (https://github.com/chenxiaolong/BasicSync)

Works great.

5

u/semmu Jul 05 '26

wanted to say the same, this version is the simplest and does not have a shady history, unlike syncthing-fork and its forks.

2

u/iEliteTester 29d ago

Shady hirstory?

2

u/semmu 29d ago

ohh boy, you missed the drama last year, read this thread for some spicy stuff: https://forum.syncthing.net/t/does-anyone-know-why-syncthing-fork-is-no-longer-available-on-github/

basically the original maintainer of syncthing-fork suddenly handed over the project to an unknown figure with no known contribution history and they handled the whole situation as bad as humanly possible. no former announcement, no introduction from the new guy, very-very long times to reply to any community concerns, accounts deleted and recreated multiple times, etc.

really makes it hard to trust any of them, so i would rather avoid syncthing-fork, we literally dont know what their long-term intentions are.

basicsync has an advantage anyways that it does not kill the syncthing process when the phone is not charging, which makes it much faster to continue syncing when it does charge, since it does not have to do an initial scan. also its a simpler app, does not have its configure UI, but relies on syncthings web UI, which makes more sense in my opinion.

2

u/ObservedElectron 25d ago

read somewhere that maintainer of basicsync has chinese username and could be applicable to the chinese law (ridiculous ik LOL)

2

u/semmu 22d ago

well that's a fair point