Announcement by the creator: https://forum.syncthing.net/t/discontinuing-syncthing-android/23002
Unfortunately I don’t have good news on the state of the android app: I am retiring it. The last release on Github and F-Droid will happen with the December 2024 Syncthing version.
Reason is a combination of Google making Play publishing something between hard and impossible and no active maintenance. The app saw no significant development for a long time and without Play releases I do no longer see enough benefit and/or have enough motivation to keep up the ongoing maintenance an app requires even without doing much, if any, changes.
Thanks a lot to everyone who ever contributed to this app!
This is very configuration dependant. With an aggressive schedule checking a large number of files, it certainly can use a lot of battery; but I’ve had it setup to sync my entire device to my server a couple times a day, while also monitoring/syncing images immediately on creation/change. It doesn’t even register on androids battery usage monitor as it uses so little power.
Anyway; just listing an option for people to look at
It definitely gets better once it’s all caught up.
But it’s still much harder on battery than ST when folders have changes.
It’s kind of not Foldersync’s fault, it’s really because of the protocols - it’s all connection-based, and FS has to compare each file at sync time.
Syncthing keeps an index so it knows what files have changed. Very different tools with different use-cases and approaches.
I used FS for years until I found ST, and had to do a lot more tweaking to get sync to work the way I wanted with FS. FS doesn’t have sync conditions like ST, so I had to use Macrodroid to trigger it when on WiFi, for example.
FS can be a solution, it’s just a lot more work for anything beyond basics.