* Use the name as sorting criteria and fall back to the ID if there's no name * Use new SyncthingSortFilterDirectoryModel also for Plasmoid's filtering * See https://github.com/Martchus/syncthingtray/issues/75
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Syncthing Tray
- Qt-based tray application
- Dolphin/Plasma integration
- command-line interface
- Qt-ish C++ interface to control Syncthing
Checkout the official forum thread for discussions and announcement of new features.
Issues can be created on GitHub but please read the "Known bugs" and "Planned features" sections in this document before.
I provide binaries/repositories for some platforms. There are also binaries/repositories provided by other distributors. For a list with links, checkout the Download section of this document. The release section on GitHub only contains a fraction of the available options.
Supported platforms
- Designed to work under any desktop environment supported by Qt with tray icon support
- No desktop environment specific libraries required (only for optional features/integrations)
- Tested under
- X Window System
- Plasma 5 (beside Qt Widgets based version there is a native "Plasmoid")
- Openbox/lxqt/LXDE
- Openbox/qt5ct/Tint2
- Awesome/qt5ct
- Cinnamon (native look and feel using adwaita-qt)
- Deepin Desktop Environment
- Xfce
- Wayland
- Plasma 5
- native "Plasmoid" works well
- for Qt Widgets based version see note below
- other desktop environments
- for Qt Widgets based version see note below
- besides, the Qt Widgets based version would only work if the platform integration plugin used for Qt applications uses the D-Bus protocol (or whatever is supported by your system tray) to show the tray icon
- Plasma 5
- Windows 10
- macOS 10.14 Mojave
- X Window System
- Can be shown as regular window if tray icon support is not available
The Qt Widgets based version basically works under Wayland but there are positioning issues (see known bugs section).
If you can confirm it works under other desktop environments, please add it to the list.
Features
- Provides quick access to most frequently used features but does not intend to replace the official web UI
- Check state of directories and devices
- Check current traffic statistics
- Display further details about directories and devices, like last file, last scan, items out of sync, ...
- Display ongoing downloads
- Display Syncthing log
- Trigger re-scan of a specific directory or all directories at once
- Open a directory with the default file browser
- Pause/resume a specific device or all devices at once
- Pause/resume a specific directory
- View recent history of changes (done locally and remotely)
- Shows notifications
- The notification to show is configurable
- Uses Qt's notification support or a D-Bus notification daemon directly
- Reads connection parameters from Syncthing config file for quick setup (when just connecting to local instance)
- Allows monitoring the status of the Syncthing systemd unit and to start and stop it (see section Configuring systemd integration)
- Provides an option to conveniently add the tray to the applications launched when the desktop environment starts
- Can launch Syncthing automatically when started and display stdout/stderr (useful under Windows)
- Provides quick access to the official web UI
- Utilizes either Qt WebEngine or Qt WebKit
- Can be built without web view support as well (then the web UI is opened in the regular browser)
- Allows switching quickly between multiple Syncthing instances
- Also features a simple command line utility
syncthingctl
- Check status
- Trigger rescan/pause/resume/restart
- Wait for idle
- View and modify raw configuration
- Supports Bash completion, even for directory and device names
- Also bundles a KIO plugin which shows the status of a Syncthing directory and allows to trigger Syncthing actions
in Dolphin file manager
- Rescan selected items
- Rescan entire Syncthing directory
- Pause/resume Syncthing directory
- See also screenshots section
- Also has an implementation as Plasmoid for Plasma 5 desktop
- Allows building Syncthing as a library to run it in the same process as the tray/GUI (optional build configuration which is not enabled by default)
- English and German localization
Does this launch or bundle Syncthing itself? What about my existing Syncthing installation?
Syncthing Tray does not launch Syncthing itself by default. There should be no interference with your existing Syncthing installation. You might consider different configurations:
- If you're happy how Syncthing is started on your system so far just tell Syncthing Tray to connect to your currently running Syncthing instance in the settings. If you're currently starting Syncthing via systemd you might consider enabling the systemd integration in the settings (see section Configuring systemd integration).
- If you would like Syncthing Tray to take care of starting Syncthing for you, you can use the Syncthing launcher
available in the settings.
- The Windows builds provided in the release section on GitHub come with a built-in version of Syncthing which you can consider to use. Keep in mind that automatic updates of Syncthing are not possible this way.
- In any case you can simply point the launcher to the binary of Syncthing (which you have to download/install separately).
- It is also possible to let Syncthing Tray connect to a Syncthing instance running on a different machine.
Screenshots
The screenshots are not up-to-date.
Qt Widgets based GUI under Openbox/Tint2 with dark Breeze theme
Under Plasma 5
Light theme
Dark theme
Customized icons
Settings dialog
Web view
Syncthing actions for Dolphin
Configuring systemd integration
The next section explains what it is good for and how to use it. If it doesn't work on your system please read the subsequent sections as well before filing an issue.
Using the systemd integration
With the system configured correctly and systemd support enabled at build-time the following features are available:
- Starting and stopping the systemd unit of Syncthing
- Consider the unit status when connecting to the local instance to prevent connection attempts when Syncthing isn't running anyways
- Detect when the system has just been resumed from standby to avoid the "Disconnect" notification in that case
However, these features are optional. To use them they must be enabled in the settings dialog first.
Be aware that Syncthing Tray assumes by default that the systemd unit is a
user unit. If you are using
a regular system-wide unit (including those started with …@username
) you need to enable the
"System unit" checkbox in the settings. Note that starting and stopping the system-wide Syncthing
unit requires authorization (systemd can ask through PolicyKit).
Required system configuration
The communication between Syncthing Tray and systemd is implemented using systemd's D-Bus service.
That means systemd's D-Bus service (which is called org.freedesktop.systemd1
) must be running on
your D-Bus. For user units the session D-Bus is
relevant and for regular units (including those started with …@username
) the system D-Bus is relevant.
It seems that systemd's D-Bus service is only available when D-Bus itself is started via systemd. That
is by default the case under Arch Linux and openSUSE and likely most other modern distributions where
it is usually started via "socket activation" (e.g. /usr/lib/systemd/user/dbus.socket
for the session
D-Bus).
All of this counts for the session D-Bus and for the system D-Bus although the startup of the session
D-Bus can be screwed up particularily easy. One easy way to screw it up is to start a second instance of
the session D-Bus manually e.g. via dbus-run-session
. When starting the session D-Bus this way the
systemd integration will not work and you will likely end up with two session D-Bus processes. It is
also worth noticing that you do not need to set the DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS
variable manually
because the systemd file dbus.socket
should take care of this.
Note that the Plasma Wayland session screwed things up in the way I've described. This has been fixed with Only spawn dbus-run-session if there isn't a session already but this change might not be available on older distributions.
Build-time configuration
The systemd integration can be explicitely enabled/disabled add compile time by adding
-DSYSTEMD_SUPPORT=ON/OFF
to the CMake arguments. If the systemd integration does not work be sure your
version of Syncthing Tray has been compiled with systemd support.
Note for distributors: There will be no hard dependency to systemd in any case. Distributions supporting alternative init systems do not need to provide differently configured versions of Syncthing Tray. Disabling the systemd integration is mainly intended for systems which do not use systemd at all (e.g. Windows and MacOS).
Hotkeys
Use the same approach as for launching an arbitrary application via a hotkey. Make it invoke
syncthingtray --trigger
to show the tray menu.syncthingtray --webui
to show the web UI.syncthingctl [...]
to trigger a particular action. Seesyncthingctl -h
for details.
Download
Source
See the release section on GitHub.
Packages and binaries
- Arch Linux
- for PKGBUILDs checkout my GitHub repository or the AUR
- for a binary repository checkout my website
- Tumbleweed, Leap, Fedora
- for RPM *.spec files and binary repository checkout openSUSE Build Servide
- there's also a repo with builds of Git master
- available split packages
syncthingtray
: Qt-widgets based GUIsyncthingplasmoid
: widget for Plasma desktopsyncthingfileitemaction
: Dolphin/KIO integrationsyncthingctl
: command line interface
- Other GNU/Linux systems
- Windows
- for mingw-w64 PKGBUILDs checkout my GitHub repository
- for statically linked binaries checkout the release section on GitHub
- NixOS
- the package syncthingtray is available from the official repositories
- FreeBSD
- the package syncthingtray is available from FreeBSD Ports
- Mac OS X/macOS
- the package syncthingtray is available from MacPorts
- Exherbo
- packages for my other project "Tag Editor" and dependencies could serve as a base and are provided by the platypus repository
- Gentoo
- packages for my other project "Tag Editor" and dependencies could serve as a base and are provided by perfect7gentleman's repository
Build instructions
The application depends on c++utilities and qtutilities and is built the same way as these libaries. For basic instructions checkout the README file of c++utilities. For building this straight, see the section below. There's also documentation about various build variables which can be passed to CMake to influence the build.
Further dependencies
The following Qt modules are requried (version 5.6 or newer): core network dbus gui widgets svg webenginewidgets/webkitwidgets
It is recommended to use at least Qt 5.14 to avoid limitations in previous versions (see Known bugs section).
The built-in web view and therefore the modules webenginewidgets/webkitwidgets are optional (see section Select Qt module for WebView).
To build the plugin for Dolphin integration KIO is also requried. Additionally, the Dolphin plugin requires Qt 5.8 or newer. To skip
building the plugin, add -DNO_FILE_ITEM_ACTION_PLUGIN:BOOL=ON
to the CMake arguments.
To build the Plasmoid for the Plasma 5 desktop, the Qt module QML and the KF5 module
Plasma are required as well. Additionally, the Plasmoid requires Qt 5.12 or newer. To skip
building the Plasmoid, add -DNO_PLASMOID:BOOL=ON
to the CMake arguments.
It is also possible to build only the CLI (syncthingctl) by adding -DNO_MODEL:BOOL=ON
and
-DNO_FILE_ITEM_ACTION_PLUGIN:BOOL=ON
to the CMake arguments. Then only the Qt modules core,
network and dbus are required.
To get rid of systemd support, add -DENABLE_SYSTEMD_SUPPORT_BY_DEFAULT
to the CMake arguments.
In this case the Qt module D-Bus is not required anymore. Note that there is no hard dependency
to systemd in any case.
Building the testsuite requires CppUnit and Qt 5.8 or higher.
Building this straight
- Install (preferably the latest version of) the CGG toolchain or Clang, the required Qt modules and CMake.
- Get the sources. For the lastest version from Git clone the following repositories:
cd $SOURCES git clone https://github.com/Martchus/cpp-utilities.git c++utilities git clone https://github.com/Martchus/qtutilities.git git clone https://github.com/Martchus/syncthingtray.git git clone https://github.com/Martchus/subdirs.git
- Build and install everything in one step:
cd $BUILD_DIR cmake \ -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release \ -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX="/install/prefix" \ $SOURCES/subdirs/syncthingtray make install -j$(nproc)
Select Qt module for web view and JavaScript
- Add
-DWEBVIEW_PROVIDER:STRING=webkit/webengine/none
to the CMake arguments to use either Qt WebKit (works with 'revived' version as well), Qt WebEngine or no web view at all. If no web view is used, the Syncthing web UI is opened in the default web browser. Otherwise the user can choose between the built-in web view and the web browser. - Add
-DJS_PROVIDER:STRING=script/qml/none
to the CMake arguments to use either Qt Script, Qt QML or no JavaScript engine at all. If no JavaScript engine is used, the CLI does not support scripting configuration changes.
Limitations of Qt WebEngine compared to Qt WebKit
- When using a version of Qt older than 5.14 there is no way to allow only a particular self-signed certificate in Qt WebEngine. That means any self-signed certificate is accepted! See: https://bugreports.qt.io/browse/QTBUG-51176
- Qt WebEngine can not be built with GCC/mingw-w64 for Windows.
- QWebEngineView seems to eat
keyPressEvent
. - Security issues are not a concern because no other website than the Syncthing web UI is shown. Any external links will be opened in the regular web browser anyways.
Troubleshooting KDE integration
If the Dolphin integration or the Plasmoid don't work, check whether the files for those components have been installed in the right directories.
For instance, under Tumbleweed it looks like this for the Plasmoid:
/usr/lib64/qt5/plugins/plasma/applets/libsyncthingplasmoid.so
/usr/share/kservices5/plasma-applet-martchus.syncthingplasmoid.desktop
/usr/share/plasma/plasmoids/martchus.syncthingplasmoid/contents/ui/*.qml
/usr/share/plasma/plasmoids/martchus.syncthingplasmoid/metadata.desktop
/usr/share/plasma/plasmoids/martchus.syncthingplasmoid/metadata.json
The files for the Dolphin integration look like this under Tumbleweed:
/usr/lib64/qt5/plugins/libsyncthingfileitemaction.so
/usr/share/kservices5/syncthingfileitemaction.desktop
The directory the *.so
file needs to be installed to seems to differ from distribution to
distribution. The right directory for your distribution can be queried from qmake using
qmake-qt5 -query QT_INSTALL_PLUGINS
. In doubt, just look where other Qt plugins are stored.
Actually the build system should be able to do that query automatically. It is also possible to
specify the directory manually, e.g. for Tumbleweed one would add
-DQT_PLUGIN_DIR=/usr/lib64/qt5/plugins
to the CMake arguments.
Also be sure that the version of the plasma framework the plasmoid was built against is not newer
than the version actually installed on the system. That can for instance easily happen when using
tumbleweed-cli
for sticking to a previous snapshot but having the lastest version of the plasmoid
from my home repository installed.
If the Plasmoid still won't load, checkout the log of plasmashell
/plasmoidviewer
/plasmawindowed
.
Also consider using strace to find out at which paths the shell is looking for *.desktop
and
*.so
files.
For a development setup of the KDE integration, continue reading the subsequent section.
Contributing
Adding translations
Currently translations for English and German are available. Further translations can be added quite easily:
- Append a new translation file for the desired locale to the
TS_FILES
list inconnector/CMakeLists.txt
,model/CMakeLists.txt
,widgets/CMakeLists.txt
,fileitemactionplugin/CMakeLists.txt
,plasmoid/CMakeLists.txt
andtray/CMakeLists.txt
. - Trigger a new build, eg. follow steps under Building this straight.
- New translation files should have been created by the build system under
connector/translations
,model/translations
,widgets/translations
,fileitemactionplugin/translations
,plasmoid/translations
andtray/translations
. - Open the files with Qt Linguist to add translations. Qt Linguist is part of the Qt Tools repository and its usage is well documented.
Remarks
- Syncthing Tray displays also text from qtutilities. Hence it makes sense adding translations there as well (following the same procedure).
- The CLI
syncthingctl
currently does not support translations.
Using backend libraries
The contained backend libraries (which provide connecting to Syncthing, data models and more) are written for internal use whithin the components contained by this repository.
Hence those libraries do not provide a stable ABI/API. If you like to use them to develop Syncthing integration or tooling with Qt and C++, it makes most sense to contribute it as an additional component directly to this repository. Then I will be able to take it into account when changeing the API.
KDE integration
Since the Dolphin integration and the Plasmoid are plugins, testing and debugging requires a few extra steps. See Testing and debugging Dolphin/KIO plugin with Qt Creator and Testing and debugging Plasma 5 plasmoid with Qt Creator.
Planned features
The tray is still under development; the following features are under construction or planned:
- Create Qt Quick Controls 2 and Kirigami 2 based frontend for mobile devices (focusing on Android)
- Make some notifications configurable on folder level
- Optionally notify for single file updates (https://github.com/Martchus/syncthingtray/issues/7)
Known bugs
The following bugs are caused by dependencies and hence tracked externally. For bugs of Syncthing Tray itself, checkout the issues on GitHub.
- Wayland limitations
- The tray menu can not be positioned correctly under Wayland because the protocol does not allow setting window positions from the client-side (at least I don't know a way to do it). This issue can not be fixed unless Wayland provides an API to set the window position to specific coordinates or a system tray icon. See discussion on freedesktop.org. Note that the Plasmoid is not affected by this limitation.
- While the tray menu is shown its entry is shown in the taskbar. Not sure whether there is a way to avoid this.
- Qt bugs
- Qt < 5.14
- Any self-signed certificate is accepted when using Qt WebEngine due to https://bugreports.qt.io/browse/QTBUG-51176.
- Qt < 5.9:
- Pausing/resuming folders and devices doesn't work when using scan-intervalls with a lot of zeros because of Syncthing bug https://github.com/syncthing/syncthing/issues/4001. This has already been fixed on the Qt-side with https://codereview.qt-project.org/#/c/187069/. However, the fix is only available in Qt 5.9 and above.
- any Qt version:
- The tray disconnects from the local instance when the network connection goes down. The network connection must be restored or the tray restarted to be able to connect to local Syncthing again. This is caused by Qt bug https://bugreports.qt.io/browse/QTBUG-60949.
- Qt < 5.14
- KDE limitations
- High-DPI scaling of Plasmoid is broken under X11 (https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=356446).
- The Plasmoid contents are possibly clipped when shown within the system notifications plasmoid.
- Systemd integration
- This feature relies especially on the system being correctly configured. Checkout the Required system configuration section for details.
Attribution for 3rd party content
- Some icons are taken from the Syncthing project.
- Some icons are taken from Font Awesome (see their license).
- Fallback icons are taken from KDE/Breeze project.