Syncing text notes between multiple devices

If you’re not using a note-taking app that handles synchronization for you, you’ll have to find a different solution.

This guide is going to detail how I use Syncthing for all my synchronization needs and how I use Signal as my notes inbox.

Syncthing #

Why Syncthing #

• it just works™
• open source
• feels-like-instant sync
• works behind CGNAT routers (no outgoing IP address)
• nice web-inteface for management
• decent memory/cpu usage
  • Has configurable run conditions on the phone to e.g. only run while being charged
• you don’t have worry about storage costs with a cloud provider
  • Dropbox’s free plan is a paltry 2GB
  • my notes are 30GB and I don’t have to care
• ignore patterns
  • very useful for caches, node_modules, vendor, etc.
• nested folders (more on that later)
• built-in versioning
  • so you can easily revert unintentional changes/deletions

Between computers #

My most basic use case was syncing my notes between my work and personal computer. My setup is running on both machines, with some tweaks depending specific on the device, all I need is to plug in my notes.

You can sync directly between the machines:

But I would recommend you put a server in between, so you can also sync without them both being online at the same time (e.g. you close the one machine and open the other.)

Between phone and computer #

I’m using Syncthing-Fork on my phone. The dynamic is much the same:

I have a media sync with my music library, podcasts, movies, etc. To only sync parts of this I can use nested folders and only expose a subset to my phone:

.
└── media             <-- syncthing folder 1
    ├── movies
    ├── music
    │   └── symlink to ../phone/music
    └── phone         <-- syncthing folder 2
        ├── podcasts
        └── music

Like this I can add new music and podcasts from my computer and delete stuff I heard podcasts from my phone. Much easier than the manual ftp moving I did before.

With the symlink I have the phones music integrated into my mpd setup, which will automatically have deletion from the phone of song I don’t like synced.

The server #

Syncthing runs fine even on a Raspberry Pi. I have it running on my homeserver, where the data is included in my regular backups.

Signal as an inbox #

I only use my phone to jot down notes, not to read them.

My unoptimized workflow was me writing into a Signal chat with myself and copying out the notes on my computer. The obvious improvement was to automate that by having a script read out the signal chat and create notes out of the messages.

I have done that by creating a script that parses the signal cli app. You can find out everything about it in it’s repository: signal-cli-to-file

With my current workflow I can easily jot down a note in Signal and have it delivered into my note-taking system. I also routinely forward messages from other chats, emails, photos, PDFs and whatever else I might run across on my phone.