this post was submitted on 20 Oct 2024
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Announcement by the creator: https://forum.syncthing.net/t/discontinuing-syncthing-android/23002

Unfortunately I don’t have good news on the state of the android app: I am retiring it. The last release on Github and F-Droid will happen with the December 2024 Syncthing version.

Reason is a combination of Google making Play publishing something between hard and impossible and no active maintenance. The app saw no significant development for a long time and without Play releases I do no longer see enough benefit and/or have enough motivation to keep up the ongoing maintenance an app requires even without doing much, if any, changes.

Thanks a lot to everyone who ever contributed to this app!

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[–] el_abuelo@programming.dev 10 points 1 hour ago (1 children)

I just installed syncthing-fork from f-droid and it worked flawlessly as far as I can tell:

  1. "Export" in syncthing
  2. Uninstall syncthing
  3. Install syncthing-fork from f-droid
  4. Import in syncthing-fork
[–] stardust@lemmy.ca 4 points 1 hour ago (1 children)

Did it transfer over your folder setups so you don't need to set it up manually?

[–] jagged_circle@feddit.nl 9 points 2 hours ago

Who gives a shit about play? How much do I have to pay you to update it in fdroid still?

[–] cmgvd3lw@discuss.tchncs.de 26 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

Sad day indeed, bitwarden going shady and this.

[–] calmluck9349@infosec.pub 8 points 5 hours ago (1 children)
[–] Atemu@lemmy.ml 7 points 4 hours ago (2 children)
[–] majestic@sh.itjust.works 2 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

I think it was made by mistake. They will more likely remove that dependency

[–] 486@lemmy.world 1 points 1 hour ago* (last edited 1 hour ago)

Perhaps the hard dependency was a mistake, but not them moving more and more code to their proprietary library. It appears that their intent is to make the client mostly a wrapper around their proprietary library, so they can still claim to have an open source GPLv3 piece of software. What good is that client if you can only use it in conjunction with that proprietary library, even if you can build it without that dependency?

[–] smiletolerantly@awful.systems 3 points 3 hours ago

Ahh those fuckers.

[–] Churbleyimyam@lemm.ee 84 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

I've installed it from F-droid but still. Fuck google. They really do need breaking up.

I heavily rely on Syncthing. Does anyone know what the outlook is for Syncthing-fork, or what the likelihood is of someone taking on maintenance of this version?

[–] iturnedintoanewt@lemm.ee 26 points 7 hours ago

The way i understand it, this stops maintenance for Syncthing, but Syncthing-fork in fdroid will continue its development and support as usual. Both show if you do a Syncthing search in fdroid. The fork is more up to date with features.

[–] imsodin@infosec.pub 101 points 10 hours ago (2 children)

I am not the creator, funnily that is/was one of the Lemmy creators: Nutomic :)
I am a syncthing co-maintainer that kept the android app on life support since a while.

[–] Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 points 1 hour ago (1 children)

THANK you for the hard work! Your app is part of my phone photo and appdata backup.

Side question: Will you continue with a fork for f-droid?

[–] imsodin@infosec.pub 4 points 1 hour ago* (last edited 57 minutes ago) (1 children)

As the statement says I wont - it will be fully discontinued. This statement applies to the official app only. It doesn't say anything about other apps or forks - any existing once can and hopefully will continue to exist. Also all the code is free.

[–] Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 7 minutes ago

Sad to hear but my point still stands: Thank you very much for your work.
Any recommendation for an Android fork or any other way to make it work on mobile without an app (if that's even possible)

[–] Harimau@lemmy.world 46 points 9 hours ago

Thank you for all of your hard work!

[–] flop_leash_973@lemmy.world 22 points 7 hours ago (2 children)

Phones are becoming less and less interesting by the day.

Once they get to the point were all of the options that don't require incredibly inconvenient sacrifices in functionality to maintain the interesting stuff like a video game console then that will kill interest in the market for me.

If I can't do anything besides basic smart phone crap I might as well just buy whatever has a good camera once every half decade or so and be done with it. So whatever top end thing Samsung or Apple are putting out.

I'm not sure Google has fully thought through what it means to just be a worse version of what Apple puts out, but with more ads.

[–] jagged_circle@feddit.nl 2 points 2 hours ago

Just let me run Qubes OS on my phone already and all the problems are solved.

[–] nossaquesapao@lemmy.eco.br 3 points 3 hours ago

You will lose interest in the market, but will keep buying? Did I misunderstand something?

God this is sad.

The parts of tech that are useful and elegant are contracting, while subscriptions and ads just get more obnoxious.

[–] GBU_28@lemm.ee 23 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

Literally set up a home Nas and syncthing last week.

What's a good alternative for Android?

[–] MalReynolds@slrpnk.net 25 points 8 hours ago* (last edited 8 hours ago) (2 children)
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[–] makingStuffForFun@lemmy.ml 153 points 14 hours ago (2 children)

Oh my goodness! Syncthing without Android leaves me screwed. My whole digital life revolves around it.

[–] imsodin@infosec.pub 26 points 10 hours ago (2 children)

Oh don't worry to much, mine too: If there wasn't an alternative for syncthing on android, I might have kept it on lifesupport :)

[–] Atemu@lemmy.ml 3 points 4 hours ago

What's the history behind this? Why could the changes be done upstream, necessitating a fork?

[–] fine_sandy_bottom@lemmy.federate.cc 17 points 9 hours ago (4 children)

What is this alternative of which you speak?

[–] iturnedintoanewt@lemm.ee 18 points 7 hours ago* (last edited 7 hours ago) (1 children)

Syncthing-fork. Both show if you search for Syncthing in fdroid. Since imsodin seems to be OP Dev maintainer for Syncthing, i think he is referring to the fork.

[–] fine_sandy_bottom@lemmy.federate.cc 6 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

Ooh.

Thanks.

I've been running the fork for a long time but somehow figured it was a soft-fork and maybe not really viable without upstream development from syncthing.

Now @imsodin@infosec.pub 's comments are making a lot more sense.

This whole thing is more or less a non-issue then?

[–] Caboose12000@lemmy.world 1 points 2 hours ago
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[–] xodoh74984@lemmy.world 121 points 14 hours ago (13 children)

This is sad. Google Play should never hold this weight the self hosted community. For Android users dedicated to open source software, F-Droid is the target.

I don't think SyncThing users would have much issue with the app disappearing from Google. Doing away with Google is the goal.

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