I’ve been a happy Dropbox user for 10+ years, it’s rock-solid syncing of a local directory with my other devices and the cloud has never let me down.
However, I’m starting to feel uneasy about staying with them. In the last years they’ve tried to cram more and more functionality I don’t care about (functions not related to syncing files) into the product, their menu-bar app has become a monster, and I’m tired of the up-sell nudges.
Apple is also transitioning all the cloud filesystem companies (like Dropbox, Google Drive, MS One Drive, etc) to use the MacOS File Provider API - probably a good thing to ensure there is a consistent experience for users. But that also makes me think they’re all going to perform exactly the same. I could be wrong of course.
Considering all that I want is for a directory tree to be mirrored between the cloud and my devices, are there any alternatives you’d recommend? Have you had good/bad experiences with iCloud say in the last 2 years?
iCloud is extremely slow. Updates in files can take 10 minutes or more to propagate, especially if two or more people have been editing them. If you’re the only one editing a file, on multiple devices, it’s still slow but much less so.
It also tries to be clever about what it syncs and when, with no options (that I’m aware of) to force it to simply fetch local copies of everything. This makes it unusable for files that you want to access in a terminal as the terminal is, for some reason, not part of the clever sync on demand system.
However, if you want to get fancy with sharing stuff with applications on iOS, such as, for example, an Obsidian file directory or some other set of markdown files to view and edit on the go, you’re pretty much forced to do it in iCloud as the Dropbox file provider on iOS is extremely unreliable and prone to locking up, even if you’re the only one editing the files. For this use case you’re pretty much condemned to iCloud.
System Settings > Apple ID > iCloud > Optimize Mac Storage = Off
You need enough disk space to store everything in your iCloud storage or this will fail.
And we're in South Africa, so not even as close to iCloud's main servers as you are (presumably).
This. I think Apple gets the most benefits of doubt when things dont work. And for 99% of the time it works fine. It is that 1%, when it happens, how long would it be fixed, is it actually better than M$ or Google questions pops up.
Basically just stay away from iCloud. You get far less headache.
When it works.
Sometimes it won't even sync files between two devices in the same room, and just show an infinite progress bar. And I'm using the latest OS versions in all devices.
Unfortunately there's no perfect solution yet across all platforms
iCloud is opaque. It tells you if some file is syncing, or if it’s only in the cloud, but that’s really about it. There’s almost no level of control. If you want a revision history, that’s what Time Machine is for. Collaborate editing, API that apps to integrate into with, previewing without downloading, etc? Those are all not really options with iCloud.
But so far, it hasn’t lost any of my data and it is probably the most approachable option with an end-to-end encryption option (which I enable). Searching works well and even finds text in images and documents.
If you just need the basics and you’re all-in on Apple products, iCloud is great.
It's not perfect, it's very opaque, but for a backup of important documents it's good. Lots of my apps also sync with iCloud anyway so I wouldn't be avoiding it, and get some extra storage for them I think, not that I need it.
If I was collaborating in any way at all I'd just be all in on Google Workspace with drive. My last company used it and it was excellent. Disclaimer, I now work at Google where we also obviously use it for everything, and it's also great here, but while I have a bias, I do think it's the best option for collaboration.
You likely know, but iCloud is not a full backup; it’s a synchronization mechanism. That helps in cases of device loss, but not in all scenarios where a backup helps.
If you have a backup, you can restore past versions of files that you accidentally modified or deleted. iCloud will happily copy such changes and deletions to the iCloud copy of your data and to other devices linked to that copy, likely before you even notice you want to go back to an older version.
To get ‘real’ backups, Apple has Time Machine.
Dropbox, depending on your plan, allows you to restore older versions of files for 30, 180, or 365 days (https://help.dropbox.com/delete-restore/recover-older-versio...)
MacOS has a ‘Versions’ feature that in theory is similar (https://support.apple.com/en-gb/guide/mac-help/mh40710/mac), but isn’t supported by all applications.
My only strong opinion in this space is to avoid anything OneDrive/Sharepoint related if you want to collaborate.
As far as I can tell, when you add a file to an iCloud folder, it indexes it locally, uploads it, and the index sticks around even after the file is evicted from local storage.
So for example, right now I searched for an address I haven't used in 10+ years. On my computer, Spotlight immediately found a PDF file that wasn't stored locally. However, I added that file from my computer, so it's in the index (presumably). If I do the same search from my phone, nothing is found, though searching the filename itself still works.
It would be nice if the index data itself were transmitted between devices, but, you take what you can get and it's pretty impressive as it is.
I also run it on my home server for a central sync point. Don’t use it much on mobile, but works well enough if I do need a file. Not a good solution for sharing with others though.
It’s open source, and it purports to sync resource forks which is very important to me - but they should really sit down and figure out how to make the process easier for newcomers.
I ended up back on Dropbox which also syncs resource forks. One of the few services that does.
Also it has many options for syncing, which is something I like so I can set it up in any way I like.
I have one “server” that contains all my synced folders, is always online and gets backed up to the cloud. Every other device syncs a subset of those folders using syncthing. It is fast and reliable. I had to set up some stignore files to exclude platform-specific files like node_modules, but other than that it has been smooth sailing.
Are you referring to untrusted devices? That is different than e2e encryption. Synching is e2e encrypted by default. Synching relays are only used when a direct connection with a peer is not possible. When a relay is used the data is encrypted. The relay cannot read it.
https://docs.syncthing.net/users/relaying.html#security
[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224
I switched from iCloud to Nextcloud, but Nextcloud will also be moving to a file provider extension, not for sure how it will work with their current sync client.
Ultimately I left macOS and don’t have any problems on Linux with Nextcloud.
As some others also mentioned, syncing is not a true backup and you'll still want to make periodic copies to another drive/machine, probably at least one copy off-site. I just use rsync to a physical server at another location I have access to, but seems like many are recommending rclone for use with cloud storage.
I'm a little surprised how well this works given two things:
1) I use both macOS and Windows - I was especially worried about projects that take dependencies from package managers but haven't run into any conflicts here
2) I keep almost everything in local git repos inside dropbox. I was really worried I'd end up with fucked up repos if I end up working on one computer when it hasn't fully sync'd yet from the other one, but again, haven't run into any issues here
I really love this setup. It works amazingly well for me. But I'm also quite concerned that in the last years Dropbox keeps trying to get me to keep files in the cloud and not sync'd locally, and Apple now wants to push Dropbox to a new model which also prioritizes this. But worse, it's not backwards compatible, there's some types of file which will no longer sync and I don't actually know if I have any of them. And no LAN sync, which I suspect is part of why I've had no conflict issues with my setup.
Most of the incompatibilities/changed behavior seem like edge cases but the list is long and very scary for someone so dependent on dropbox: https://help.dropbox.com/installs/macos-support-for-expected...
So I guess I too am in the market for a dead simple "just do an amazing job of keeping this filesystem the same across devices" product.
See my previous posts on the matter for more info.
See https://skogsbrus.xyz/dont-put-all-your-apples-in-one-basket... for more info.