What is this?

Syncthing (core) uses a rescan interval to detect changes in folders. This application (syncthing-inotify) uses OS primitives to detect changes as soon as they happen. Therefore, if you save a file, syncthing-inotify will know about it and pass this information to Syncthing such that near real-time synchronisation can be achieved.

Where do I get it?

Syncthing-inotify binaries are released on github

How do I run it?

Syncthing-inotify will automatically read the Syncthing config if it is found in the standard path.

• Run and hide on unix in a screen

screen -S inotify -dm ./syncthing-inotify

• Run and hide on windows in .vbs script

CreateObject("Wscript.Shell").Run "syncthing-inotify.exe, 0, True

• Run and hide on windows using API key in .vbs script

CreateObject("Wscript.Shell").Run "syncthing-inotify.exe -api=""...""", 0, True

• Install as a service, see the etc/ folder

I'm confused

• Try Syncthing-GTK, QSyncthingTray (both cross-platform) or SyncTrayzor (Windows only).
• Read the commandline options: ./syncthing-inotify -help. Settings, such as an API key, need to be manually provided if you use a custom home for Syncthing.

Building syncthing-inotify

# To clone
mkdir -p src/github.com/syncthing
git clone https://github.com/syncthing/syncthing-inotify.git src/github.com/syncthing/syncthing-inotify
# Following commands are needed every time you want to build (unless you use Golang's specific folder structure: C:\src  or ~/src/)
export GOPATH=$(pwd)
cd src/github.com/syncthing/syncthing-inotify
go get
go build
# To tag the build with a version number, use
go build -ldflags "-w -X main.Version `git describe --abbrev=0 --tags`"
# See cross-compile.rb for further compilation details
# - Please prefix the build with GO386=387 when building for i386
# - Please prefix the build with GOARM=5 when building for arm
# - Depends on darwin_amd64/notify.a for OSX builds

Troubleshooting for folders with many files on Linux

• Linux limits the amount of inotify watchers (typically to 8192). Therefore, if you wish to sync many files and folders, you'll need to increase the upper limit:

  Permanently fix Too many open files on most Linux distributions: echo "fs.inotify.max_user_watches=204800" | sudo tee -a /etc/sysctl.conf

  On Arch Linux, instead run: echo "fs.inotify.max_user_watches=204800" | sudo tee -a /etc/sysctl.d/90-override.conf (see this forum post)

  Fix Too many open files for Linux until next reboot: sudo sh -c 'echo 204800 > /proc/sys/fs/inotify/max_user_watches' (should be applied before launching syncthing-inotify)