I’m back! This is a continuation of my series on platform-specific hidden gem apps that you have discovered that are the best in their class for your usecase.
We’ve done iOS+MacOS so far so lets get universal and share our Android hidden gems.
For mine, I would say NewPipe for YouTube… Lets do it!
Edit: Please try to avoid apps that cannot be purchased (subscription apps) since it is important that the creator cannot cut you off once you’ve taken time/effort/money to integrate it into your workflow and dependance. No Apollos, which have that fatal flaw + relying on an external API that they additionally cannot gurantee
Syncthing.
Allows you to use a laptop and sync your phone to it. No iCloud or Google drive needed. All syncs locally.
Wanted to also suggest Resilio Sync if you need something a little less fussy or smaller learning curve. I use it for many thins between devices, I never really “got” Syncthing altho I support their mission and excellent work the community benefits greatly from.
You have used both. How does Resilio compare to Syncthing?
Syncthing is a bit comprehensive and less streamlined, I would say. I would definitely have to sit down for at least 1/2 day to get everything playing nice.
With Resilio, you can be up and running in like 20 minutes on the longer side. You can setup a sync folder and use a QR code to have everybody talking in a few minutes and customize the fewer but necessary options.
No offense to Syncthing, Resilio was probably inspired by it (conjecture)
I added a new pc to syncthing this week, I installed it and scanned a qr and was done in like three minutes.
YMMV. I prefer Resilio. Thats all
Syncthing generally works pretty well, but every now and again it decides that it’s out of sync for no reason requiring a purge and rebuild of my shared dirs.
Still an order of magnitude more useful than synology drive which I upgraded from though.
It doesn’t really matter but Resilio came out of the BitTorrent Sync project which is relatively older.
I believe it is based on BitTorrent protocol-wise, yeah. I guess I was referring more to the notion of a localized synching solution as opposed to the usually non-local or remote nature of torrenting.