Ask the real poster/dev in one of the lemmy.ml communities.

Yes! On android with Termux terminal.

(note: If you sync between computer and phone you don't need to install it on your phone. One side only is enough.)

Great question! Let me sum it up here for others:

rsync is one-way only and has no memory between runs, every execution starts from scratch. Synchi is two-way, stateful (knows what changed since last sync), and content-aware (uses hashes, so no false positives from timestamp changes). It also handles conflicts explicitly instead of silently overwriting.

That said, rsync is still the better tool for backups and one-way mirroring. Synchi is for when you need true bidirectional sync.

Here is also a comparison with unison and syncthing: https://jakobkreft.github.io/synchi/why.html

This is exactly how I use Synchi! Same idea but I use Logseq instead of Obsidian (very similar open-source alternative, worth checking out). Works great for syncing markdown notes between computers and my phone on demand. Of course I need to remember to sync before switching devices, but I prefer this then constant running in the background.

Haven't thought about an Obsidian/Logseq plugin but honestly that sounds like a great idea... For now it's CLI only, but I can definitely see the value.

Thanks! If you just need backup, with Synchi you set the 'force=root_a' in config, otherwise its bidirectional sync. If you need pure backups, rsync or similar might still be the better fit as they have some backup specific features.

Thanks! I've done some testing, nothing scientific, but I can tell you it transfers at about the same speed as other tools I tested, usually limited by network speed. I spent quite some time optimizing how small files are packaged together for transfer, so there's no slowdown even with many small files compared to a single file of the same total size. Android APK idea is not bad though! I've published 2 Android apps before so will definitely look into it. Current Termux terminal approach is definitely not very user friendly.

I'm not too familiar with Steam Deck, but that sounds like it would work! As long as you can point Synchi at both save directories, it would keep them in sync and save you the manual copy-paste.

Nothing wrong with that at all! You can set up a cron job to run Synchi every 5 minutes and it would work just fine. The only minor downside is some wasted compute since it rescans and hashes everything each run, even if nothing changed. For most files like text it's negligible though.

In the future I might look into a lightweight daemon that uses Linux filesystem notifications (inotify) to trigger a sync when something changes.

I used Syncthing for years, it's great (if you use it and you are happy, then you dont need to switch), but they are quite different. Syncthing requires daemons on all devices and can't sync two local folders on the same machine. Synchi is on-demand, runs only on one side, and doesn't care where the two root folders are.

I wrote a more detailed comparison here: https://jakobkreft.github.io/synchi/why.html

It compares everything first (scan, diff, hash), then halts before any changes are made. You see a full summary of what will happen, and approve each category separately (copies, deletes). It's designed to be very transparent. Every change must be approved before anything is written.

Conflicts get their own interactive screen where you pick per-file: keep A, keep B, or skip. Nothing is written until you've resolved all of them.

If you want to skip the prompts, --yes flag auto-approves, but conflicts still halt for user input. Flags --force root_a or --force root_b are used for mirrors one way here conflicts are not possible.

Totally fair, Unison is solid and I was inspired by it a lot, but its also the reason why I started working on my own version. I was frustrated with it because on Synology/SMB filesystems it kept seeing changed timestamps as modified files, so I'd constantly get fake changes and transfers. Synchi only treats a file as changed if the content hash actually differs.

Also, I once managed to delete my entire home folder because I tried syncing it with Unison to a server and it synced the empty remote folder back to my home, wiping everything. That's exactly the kind of human error Synchi tries to prevent by being very explicit and verbose about what it's about to do.

Thank you for keeping an eye on it!