Syncthing Tray

• Qt 5-based tray application
• Dolphin/Plasma integration
• command-line interface
• Qt-ish C++ interface to control Syncthing

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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.

Supported platforms

• Designed to work under any desktop environment supported by Qt 5 with tray icon support
• No desktop environment specific libraries required (only for optional features)
• 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 5 applications uses the D-Bus protocol (or whatever is supported by your system tray) to show the tray icon
  • Windows 10
  • macOS 10.14 Mojave
• 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
• Shows Syncthing notifications
• Can read the local Syncthing configuration file for quick setup when just connecting to local instance
• Can show the status of the Syncthing systemd unit and allows to start and stop it (see section Use of systemd)
• Provides an option to conveniently add the tray to the applications launched when the desktop environment starts
• Can launch Syncthing and syncthing-inotify automatically when started and display stdout/stderr (useful under Windows)
• Provides quick access to the official web UI
  • Utilizes either Qt WebKit or Qt WebEngine
  • Can be built without web view support as well (then the web UI is opened in the regular browser)
• Allows quickly switching between multiple Syncthing instances
• Shows notifications via Qt or uses D-Bus notification daemon directly
• Also features a simple command line utility syncthingctl
  • Check status
  • Trigger rescan/pause/resume/restart
  • Wait for idle
  • View and modify 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
• Build Syncthing as a library to run it in the same process as the tray/GUI (optional build configuration, not enabled by default)
• English and German localization

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)
• Show recently processed items
• Make some notifications configurable on folder level
• Optionally notify for single file updates (https://github.com/Martchus/syncthingtray/issues/7)

Screenshots

The screenshots might not be 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

Hotkeys

To create hotkeys, you can use the same approach as for any other application. Just make it invoke the syncthingctl application with the arguments for the desired action.

Hotkey for web UI

Just add --webui to the syncthingtray arguments to trigger the web UI. Syncthing Tray ensures that no second instance will be spawned if it is already running and just trigger the web UI.

Use of systemd

Use of systemd can be explicitely enabled/disabled by adding -DSYSTEMD_SUPPORT=ON/OFF to the CMake arguments. There will be no hard dependency to systemd in any case.

With systemd support the tray can start and stop the systemd unit of Syncthing. It can also take the unit status into account when connecting to the local instance. So connection attempts can be prevented when Syncthing isn't running anyways. However, those features are optional. To use them they must be enabled in the settings dialog first.

Syncthing Tray assumes by default that the systemd unit is a user unit. If you are using a system-wide unit 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 though PolicyKit).

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
• NixOS
  • the package syncthingtray is available from the official repositories
• 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
• Other GNU/Linux systems
  • AppImage repository for releases on the openSUSE Build Service
  • AppImage repository for builds from Git master the openSUSE Build Service
• Windows
  • for mingw-w64 PKGBUILDs checkout my GitHub repository
  • for statically linked binaries checkout the release section on GitHub
• FreeBSD
  • the package syncthingtray is available from FreeBSD Ports
• Mac OS X/macOS
  • the package syncthingtray is available from MacPorts

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 5 modules are requried (version 5.6 or newer): core network dbus gui widgets svg webenginewidgets/webkitwidgets

The built-in web view is 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 5 module QML and the KF5 module Plasma are required as well. Additionally, the Plasmoid requires Qt 5.8 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

0. Install (preferably the latest version of) the CGG toolchain or Clang, the required Qt 5 modules and CMake.
1. 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
   

2. 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

• Currently there is no way to allow a particular self-signed certificate in Qt WebEngine. Currently any self-signed certificate is accepted! See: https://bugreports.qt.io/browse/QTBUG-51176
• Qt WebEngine can not be built with mingw-w64.
• QWebEngineView seems to eat keyPressEvent.
• Qt WebEngine is more buggy in my experience.
• 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 5 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.

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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.

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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:

1. Append a new translation file for the desired locale to the TS_FILES list in connector/CMakeLists.txt, model/CMakeLists.txt, widgets/CMakeLists.txt, fileitemactionplugin/CMakeLists.txt, plasmoid/CMakeLists.txt and tray/CMakeLists.txt.
2. Trigger a new build, eg. follow steps under Building this straight.
3. New translation files should have been created by the build system under connector/translations, model/translations, widgets/translations, fileitemactionplugin/translations, plasmoid/translations and tray/translations.
4. 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.

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
  • Any self-signed certificate is accepted when using Qt WebEngine due to Qt bug https://bugreports.qt.io/browse/QTBUG-51176.
  • 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.
  • 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.

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.