Syncthing for macOS
Introduction
syncthing-macos is a native macOS Syncthing tray application bundle. It hosts and wraps Syncthing, making it behave more like a native macOS application and less like a command-line utility with a web browser interface.
Features include:
- Open the Syncthing WebGUI from the tray in your preferred browser.
- Optionally starts on login, so you don't need to set up Syncthing as a service.
- Tray icon indicates when it is connected to syncthing (no status updates yet).
- Retina ready icons for the Application bundle and status tray.
- Automatic updates (using Sparkle pushed from github releases).
- Open shared folders directly in Finder.
Screenshot
Installation
NOTICE: This is the official Syncthing macOS application bundle. Please make sure you have no other syncthing instances or wrappers running or else this application will not work!
Currently, OS X 10.10 or higher is necessary. syncthing-macos is packaged as a disk image as an application bundled with the syncthing binary.
To install just download the dmg, mount it and drag and drop the application to install. The only necessary configuration is to set the API key and URL when provisioning a remote syncthing instance, the local instance is auto-configured. The application automatically keeps the syncthing binary updated, while running.
The latest version is available at Github Releases, or it can also be installed using homebrew brew cask install syncthing
Why
All cross-platform approaches are not able to use all the native facilities of macOS. Including auto-updates, vector icon set (retina-ready) and creating an application bundle. GUIs are designed with XCode and everything is coded in Objective-C and Swift which is "the native approach".
Compiling
Build with XCode or run:
make debug
It will automaticly download syncthing amd64 binary and add it to the Application Bundle.
For release builds signing the application build and creating an distributable DMG:
make release-dmg
The script will select the first available Developer ID and sign the app with it. To specify the signing identity, use SYNCTHING_APP_CODE_SIGN_IDENTITY environment variable:
SYNCTHING_APP_CODE_SIGN_IDENTITY="Mac Developer: foo@bar.com (XB59MXU8EC)" make release-dmg
Goal
The goal of this project is to keep the Native macOS Syncthing tray as simple as possible. No graphs, no advanced configuration windows. It just provides a very simple wrapper so users are not aware syncthing ships as a commandline application. It strives to have a usability of good-by-default and should always follow the Apple Human Interface Guidelines to feel as much as an native application as possible.
FAQ: Frequently asked questions
Default IP address change
When the default IP address is changed from 127.0.0.1 to a routable one like e.g 192.168.1.102 the tray application
preferences need to be set also. Or else the API cannot be accessed and will stay 'Offline'. If you broke the
configuration you can manually edit the file under the ~/Library/Application Support/Syncthing/config.xml using
Finder with Go -> Go to folder. And restart the syncthing service from the tray.
Known bugs
See the issue tracker for the current status.
Design
Design, internals and build process is documented in doc/design.md
Contributions
Contributions and issue reports are welcome.