Android syncthing-fork repo gone and Developer profile gone private. Update:moved to a different repo @ https://github.com/researchxxl/syncthing-android : opensource

[+] PiraHxCx@lemmy.ml 49 points 5 months ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (3 children)

[deleted]

[–] rezad@lemmy.world 36 points 5 months ago (1 children)

"2025-08-11"
that is from 3 months ago. I think that was another repo.

this repo I included had update until today.

[–] SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone 41 points 5 months ago (2 children)

yeah catfriend1 was technically in charge of syncthing-fork before the original syncthing stopped being developed. catfriend1 in other words essentially just continued development on their fork on their own, which kept syncthing alive.

[–] paper_moon@lemmy.world 14 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

F-droid still has the most current builds available for the catfriend1 syncthing-fork.. But yeah, this isn't good. Damn. Was hoping if they needed to step back from maintaining a project like this, they'd at least have a call for a volunteer, or let the project languish until someone forked it again and took charge.. To shut it down completely, not great for anyone.

[–] SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone 20 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (4 children)

Well, as OP mentioned, and others have speculated in the official syncthing forums, apparently catfriend1 did a repository reset where they wiped everything and started over something like three times last year. So that's still a possibility. I'm going to wait until more information comes out or until catfriend1 doesn't come back after a month or two before I start worrying about the future of the project. Worth finding anyone who had backed up the most recent version of the repository though, just in case.

[–] paper_moon@lemmy.world 31 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

Thats.. An odd way to do software development. You can pretty much do whatever with git, its a very powerful tool. Shouldn't need to destroy and create repo's regularly..

Worth noting, if the repo never comes back, syncthing tray seems like they added android support per this message.

And it seems like you can install syncthing from termux and just use the webGUI, per that previously linked forum thread.

[–] SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone 6 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I think that's generally agreed and no one seems entirely sure why catfriend1 chooses to do it this way.

[–] helix@feddit.org 6 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Maybe they created a backdoor and every time someone finds out a group of hackers rush to find another sneaky way to include a new one? 😅

[–] paper_moon@lemmy.world 6 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Yeaaah.. As a user, I didn't know they were doing this, its enough to make me question the integrity of the code and maybe switch to something else, like syncthing Tray or just using termux to install it.

[–] AmbiguousProps@lemmy.today 1 points 5 months ago

For real. I'm probably gunna swap over to something else, this is pretty sus.

[–] vas@lemmy.ml 7 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

F-Droid has a copy of the source code I assume.

[–] tgxn@lemmy.tgxn.net 3 points 5 months ago

Yep, looks like it. We could continue this development elsewhere. https://f-droid.org/packages/com.github.catfriend1.syncthingfork/

[–] KryptonNerd@slrpnk.net 2 points 5 months ago

I think helium314 keeps a fairly current version

[–] mistermodal@lemmy.ml 2 points 5 months ago

Lmfao what?

[–] BrianTheeBiscuiteer@lemmy.world 5 points 5 months ago

They also maintained syncthing-lite and that's also gone. 😬

[–] communism@lemmy.ml 2 points 5 months ago

That's about the upstream Syncthing Android app. This post is about a fork that was continued to be maintained after the "official" Android app stopped being developed.

[–] quick_snail@feddit.nl 1 points 5 months ago

That doesn't make sense. We don't use google play. We use fdroid.

[–] tgxn@lemmy.tgxn.net 29 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

~~https://github.com/syncthing/syncthing-android/releases~~

~~This ones a little old, but seems fine in Obtainium?~~

Right, as the next commentor says; it's deprecated, and won't get updates. Interesting that they basically are saying "move to a different service"?

This looks to be an active fork: https://github.com/RoootTheFox/syncmeow

🤷‍♂️

Update: The Syncthing-Fork source is still available here: https://f-droid.org/packages/com.github.catfriend1.syncthingfork

[–] Lumidaub@feddit.org 26 points 5 months ago

What no don't 😱

[–] midribbon_action@lemmy.blahaj.zone 16 points 5 months ago (3 children)

The android development always just seemed... off, idk, I just got weird feelings about it and the fork. So I switched my family to use termux and termux:boot to run syncthing instead, it works fine.

[–] AmbiguousProps@lemmy.today 6 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Does running termux all of the time affect battery much?

[–] midribbon_action@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Not as much as the syncthing apps.

[–] Fmstrat@lemmy.world 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

At that point why not use rsync?

[–] midribbon_action@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I have no idea what you mean. I just had to set this up once on my parents' phones and now it works all the time, even when they change networks, no port forwarding or any interaction required on their part. Rsync is a cli that requires an existing network connection between two devices, both online, and doesn't watch files or create a file version history. It is an entirely different tool.

[–] Fmstrat@lemmy.world 2 points 5 months ago

Ahh, makes sense for your use case, then.

Rather than ST I used to use rsync+ssh, and just had a Docker SSH container running with users in the ENV.

I've switched to WG in all devices since then, though.

[–] communism@lemmy.ml 1 points 5 months ago (1 children)

The android development always just seemed… off, idk, I just got weird feelings about it and the fork.

Could you elaborate at all?

[–] midribbon_action@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 points 5 months ago

Yeah, it's odd to me that the syncthing repo makes a point of not officially supporting android, and not making any promises about its continued maintenance. It's a large part of their user base, but it seems, for some reason, this developer that went dark never spent time to coordinate with or join the core team.

[–] hexagonwin@lemmy.sdf.org 16 points 5 months ago

Does F-Droid keep a backup of the apps' repo? Anyone has a backup of https://github.com/Catfriend1/syncthing-android ?

Maybe I should start having my own github mirror..

[–] jjlinux@lemmy.zip 13 points 5 months ago

And I was wondering why I was getting an error 404 in Obtainium 😒

[–] dessalines@lemmy.ml 10 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

No one knows what the story is yet?

[–] sludgewife@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 points 5 months ago

it now redirects to a different github account, researchxxl. issues are turned off. old pull requests are there so it looks like the repo was transferred

[–] Mikelius@lemmy.ml 1 points 5 months ago

I have forks that are updated every night through a cron for these very reasons. But I didn't ever set it up for Android apps... Time to fork a whole lot more projects. sigh

[–] papertowels@mander.xyz -5 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

~~To be clear, this was announced months ago. Many folks moved to syncthing-fork on android~~

EDIT: I was wrong! This is def syncthing fork.

[–] Lumidaub@feddit.org 22 points 5 months ago (1 children)

This IS syncthing-fork.

[–] papertowels@mander.xyz 8 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Oh that is bad. Could OP rename the title?

[–] rezad@lemmy.world 4 points 5 months ago (1 children)

ok.
just for you,

[–] papertowels@mander.xyz 1 points 5 months ago

<3

But yeah, fuck.

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