Syncthing Tray

Qt 5-based tray application for Syncthing

Supported platforms

• Designed to work under any desktop environment supported by Qt 5 with tray icon support
• No desktop environment specific libraries required
• Tested under
  • Plasma 5
  • Openbox/qt5ct/Tint2
  • Cinnamon
  • Windows 10
• Can be shown as regular window if tray icon support is not available

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 direcoties and devices, like last file, last scan, ...
  • Display ongoing downloads
  • 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
• Shows Syncthing notifications
• Does not allow configuring Syncthing itself (currently I do not intend to add this feature as it could cause more harm than good when not implemented correctly)
• Can read the Syncthing configuration file for quick setup when just connecting to local instance
• Provides an option to conveniently add the tray to the applications launched when the desktop environment starts
• Can launch Syncthing 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
• Features a simple command line utility syncthingctl to check Syncthing status and trigger rescan/pause/resume/restart

Planned features

The tray is still under development; the following features are planned:

• Show recently processed items
• Improve notification handling
• Create Plasmoid for Plasma 5 desktop

Screenshots

Under Openbox/Tint2

Under Plasma 5

Settings dialog

Web view

Hotkey for Web UI

To create a hotkey for the web UI, you can use the same approach as for any other application. Just add --webui to the arguments to trigger the web UI. Syncthing Tray ensures that no second instance will be spawned if it is already running.

Download

Source

See the release section on GitHub.

Packages and binaries

• Arch Linux
  • for PKGBUILDs checkout my GitHub repository or the AUR
  • for binary repository checkout my website
• Tumbleweed
  • for RPM *.spec files and binary repository checkout openSUSE Build Servide
• Windows
  • for mingw-w64 PKGBUILDs checkout my GitHub repository
  • for binaries checkout my website and the release section on GitHub .

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 next section.

The following Qt 5 modules are requried: core network gui widgets svg webenginewidgets/webkitwidgets

Building this straight

0. Install (preferably the latest version of) g++ 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
   git clone https://github.com/Martchus/qtutilities.git
   git glone 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 WebView

• If Qt WebKitWidgets is installed on the system, the tray will link against it. Otherwise it will link against Qt WebEngineWidgets.
• To force usage of Qt WebKit/Qt WebEngine or to disable both add -DWEBVIEW_PROVIDER=webkit/webengine/none to the CMake arguments.

BTW: I still prefer the deprecated Qt WebKit because

• 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.