Syncthing Tray

Syncthing Tray provides a tray icon and further platform integrations for
Syncthing. Check out the
website for an overview and
screenshots.

The following integrations are provided:

• Tray application
• Context menu extension for the
  Dolphin file manager
• Plasmoid for KDE Plasma
• Command-line interface
• Android app (still experimental)
• Qt-ish C++ library

---

This document is the main documentation of Syncthing Tray. It is available
on the Syncthing Tray website
and on GitHub. If you are not already familiar
with Syncthing itself, you should also have a look at the Syncthing documentation as
this document only covers Syncthing Tray.

Check out the official forum thread for discussions
and announcements of new features.

Issues can be created on GitHub but please check the
documentation on known bugs and workarounds before.

Syncthing Tray works with Syncthing v2. It also very likely still works with Syncthing v1 (and even v0) but this
is not regularly tested anymore. Syncthing Tray is maintained, and updates will be made to support future Syncthing
versions as needed.

Supported platforms

Official binaries are provided for Windows (for i686, x86_64 and aarch64), GNU/Linux (for x86_64) and Android
(for x86_64 and aarch64). They can be downloaded from the website
and the release section on GitHub. However, this is only a
fraction of the available downloads. I also provide further repositories for some GNU/Linux distributions. There
are also binaries/repositories provided by other distributors. For a list of links, check out the "Download"
section of this document.

Syncthing Tray is known to work under:

• Windows 10 and 11
• KDE Plasma
• Openbox using lxqt/LXDE or using Tint2
• GTK-centered desktops such as Cinnamon, GNOME and Xfce (with caveats, see remarks below)
• COSMIC (only simple tray menu works, see remarks below)
• Awesome
• i3
• macOS
• Deepin Desktop Environment
• Sway/Swaybar/Waybar (with caveats, see remarks below)
• Android (still experimental, see Android-specific documentation)

This does not mean Syncthing Tray is actively tested on all of these platforms or
desktop environments.

For Plasma 5 and 6, in addition to the Qt Widgets based version, there is also a "native"
Plasmoid. Note that the latest version of the Plasmoid generally also requires the
latest version of Plasma 5 or 6 as no testing on earlier versions is done. Use the Qt
Widgets version on other Plasma versions. Check out the
"Configuring Plasmoid" section for further details.

On GTK-centered desktops, have a look at the
Arch Wiki
for how to achieve a more native look and feel. Under GNOME, one needs to install
an extension for tray icon support (unless
your distribution already provides such an extension by default).

Limitations of your system tray might affect Syncthing Tray. For instance, when using the mentioned GNOME
extension the Syncthing Tray UI shown in the screenshots is only accessible by double-clicking
the icon. If your system tray, like on COSMIC, is unable to show the Syncthing Tray UI, you can still use
Syncthing Tray for the tray icon and basic functionality accessible via the menu.

Note that under Wayland-based desktops there will be positioning issues. However, the Plasmoid is not affected
by this.

The documentation on known bugs and workarounds
contains further information and workarounds for certain platform-specific issues, such as the positioning issues under
Wayland.

Features

This section lists the most important features. Most features are optional and configurable. Some features are
platform-dependent.

• Tray icon displaying the overall status of Syncthing
• Quick access to the most used features but no full replacement of the official web-based UI
  • Check state of folders and devices
  • Check current traffic statistics
  • Display further details about folders and devices, such as last file, last
    scan, items out of sync, etc.
  • Display ongoing downloads
  • Display Syncthing log
  • Trigger a re-scan of a specific folder or all folders
  • Open a folder with the default file browser
  • Pause/resume a specific device or all devices
  • Pause/resume a specific folder
  • View recent history of changes (done locally and remotely)
• Notifications for various events
• Wizard for a quick setup
• Autostart configuration
• Launcher for Syncthing
• Systemd integration
• Suspending synchronization while the network connection is metered
• Browser for the global file tree and selecting items to add to ignore patterns
• Quick access to the official web-based UI
  • Can be opened as regular browser tab
  • Can be opened in a dedicated window using either
    • Qt WebEngine/WebKit
    • the "app mode" of a Chromium-based browser (e.g. Chrome and Edge)
• Switching quickly between multiple Syncthing instances; monitoring multiple Syncthing instances
• App for running Syncthing under Android
• Simple command line utility syncthingctl complementing the official CLI of Syncthing
  • Check status
  • Trigger rescan/pause/resume/restart
  • Wait for idle
  • View and modify raw configuration
  • Bash completion with support for folder and device names
• KIO plugin for the Dolphin file manager
  • Rescan selected items
  • Rescan entire Syncthing folder
  • Pause/resume Syncthing folder
  • See also the screenshots
• Building Syncthing as a library to run it in the same process as the tray/GUI

Does this launch or bundle Syncthing itself? What about my existing Syncthing installation?

Syncthing Tray does not launch Syncthing itself by default. There should be no interference with your existing
Syncthing installation. You might consider different configurations:

• If you're happy with how Syncthing is started on your system, just tell Syncthing Tray to connect to your currently
  running Syncthing instance in the settings.
  • When starting Syncthing via systemd it is recommended to enable the systemd integration in the settings (see section
    "Configuring systemd integration").
  • When starting Syncthing by other means (e.g. as Windows service) there are no further integrations provided. Hence,
    Syncthing Tray cannot know whether Syncthing is expected to be running or not. It will therefore unconditionally
    attempt to connect with Syncthing continuously as-per the configurable re-connect interval. It will also
    unconditionally notify when disconnecting from Syncthing if this kind of notification is enabled (so it makes perhaps
    most sense to disable it).
• If you would like Syncthing Tray to take care of starting Syncthing for you, you can use the Syncthing launcher
  available in the settings. Note that this is not supported when using the Plasmoid.
  • The Linux and Windows builds provided in the release section on GitHub
    come with a built-in version of Syncthing which you can consider to use. Note that the built-in version of Syncthing
    will only be updated when you update Syncthing Tray (either manually or via its updater). The update feature of
    Syncthing itself is not available this way.
  • In any case you can simply point the launcher to the binary of Syncthing which you have to download/install separately.
    This way, Syncthing can be (but also has to be) updated independently of Syncthing Tray, e.g. using Syncthing's own
    update feature.
  • Check out the "Configuring the built-in launcher" section for further details.
• It is also possible to let Syncthing Tray connect to a Syncthing instance running on a different machine.

Note that the experimental UI tailored for mobile devices is more limited. Currently, it can only start a built-in
version of Syncthing or connect to an externally started Syncthing instance. It will set a custom config/data
directory for Syncthing so any Syncthing instance launched via the mobile UI will not interfere with existing setups.

Installation and deinstallation

Check out the website for obtaining the executable
or package. This documentation also lists more options and instructions for building from sources.

If you are using a package manager, you should follow its usual workflow.

Otherwise, you have to extract the archive and launch the contained executable. Especially on Windows, please
read the notes on the website before filing any issues. To uninstall, delete the executable again.

Notifications about updates can be enabled in the settings which also allow upgrading to a new version if available.
This simply replaces the executable at its location, which needs to be writable. The old
executable is renamed/preserved as a backup and you can simply rename it back if you need to go back to the previous
version.

For further cleanup, you may want to ensure that autostart is disabled (to avoid a dangling autostart entry). You may also
delete the configuration files (see "Location of the configuration file"
section below).

Configuration

You need to configure how Syncthing Tray should connect to Syncthing itself. The previous
section, "Does this launch or bundle Syncthing itself…", describes available options. Additionally,
a wizard is shown on the first launch, which can guide you through the configuration for common
setups. If you have dismissed the wizard, you can still open it at any time via a button on the
top-right corner of the settings dialog.

It may be worthwhile to browse through the pages of the configuration dialog to tweak Syncthing
Tray to your needs, e.g., to turn off notifications you may find annoying.

Location of the configuration file

The configuration file is usually located under ~/.config/syncthingtray.ini on GNU/Linux and
under %appdata%\syncthingtray.ini on Windows. For other platforms and further details,
check out the
Qt documentation
(Syncthing Tray uses the "IniFormat"). For portable installations, it is also possible to create
an empty file called syncthingtray.ini directly next to the executable.

You can remove the configuration file from the mentioned location to start from scratch.

Note that this only applies to Syncthing Tray. For Syncthing itself, check out
its own documentation.

The Plasmoid uses the same configuration file but also uses Plasma's configuration
management for settings specific to a concrete instance of the Plasmoid.

The experimental UI tailored for mobile devices uses a distinct configuration which is
located under ~/.config/Martchus/Syncthing Tray on GNU/Linux and
/storage/emulated/0/Android/data/io.github.martchus.syncthingtray on Android and
%appdata%\Martchus\Syncthing Tray on Windows. The configuration and database of Syncthing
itself are also located within this directory when Syncthing is launched via the mobile UI.

Connect to Syncthing via Unix domain socket

When using a Unix domain socket as the Syncthing GUI address (e.g., by starting Syncthing with
parameters such as --gui-address=unix://%t/syncthing.socket --no-port-probing), you need to
specify the path to the socket as "Local path" in the advanced connection settings. This
setting requires Qt 6.8 or higher. You still need to provide the "Syncthing URL" using the
unix+http as scheme (e.g. unix+http://127.0.0.1:8080 where the host and port are not
actually used). However, the web view will not work with this.

Single-instance behavior and launch options

This section does not apply to the Android app, the
Plasmoid and the
Dolphin integration.

Syncthing Tray is a single-instance application. So, if you try to start a second instance, the
second process will only pass arguments to the process that is already running and then exit. This
is useful as it prevents one from accidentally launching two Syncthing instances at the same
time via the built-in Syncthing launcher. It also allows triggering certain actions via launch
options, see "Configuring hotkeys" for details.

There are a few other notable launch options:

• --connection [config name] …:
  Shows tray icons for the specified connection configurations (instead of a single tray
  icon for the primary connection configuration). Syncthing Tray will still behave as a
  single-instance application, so a single process will handle all those tray icons and the
  built-in Syncthing launcher will launch Syncthing only once.
• --replace:
  Changes the single-instance behavior so that the already running process is exited and
  the second process continues to run. This is useful to restart Syncthing Tray after
  an update.
• --new-instance:
  Disables the single-instance behavior. This can be useful to run two instances of
  Syncthing via the built-in launcher. This only makes sense if these
  two Syncthing instances use a different configuration/database which can be achieved with
  a portable configuration.
• --single-instance:
  Prevents the creation of a second tray icon if Syncthing Tray is already running. (Without
  this option, Syncthing Tray will still show another tray icon regardless of its single-instance
  behavior.)
• --help:
  Prints all launch options.

Those were the options of the tray application. Check out
"Using the command-line interface" for an
overview of available tooling for the command-line.

Configuring Plasmoid

The Plasmoid requires Syncthing Tray to be installed via distribution-specific packaging. It is
not available via the generic GNU/Linux download or the Flatpak. Check out the relevant notes
on the downloads page for
available options and details on package names. For further information about supported versions
of Plasma, check out the "Supported platforms" section.

The built-in Syncthing launcher is not available in the Plasmoid because it is recommended to rely on
the systemd integration instead.

Once installed, Plasma might need to be restarted for the Plasmoid to be available.

The Plasmoid can be added/shown in two different ways:

1. It can be shown as part of the system tray Plasmoid.
   • Whether the Plasmoid is shown as part of the system tray Plasmoid can be configured
     in the settings of the system tray Plasmoid. You can access the settings of the
     system tray Plasmoid from its context-menu which can be opened by right-clicking on
     the arrow for expanding/collapsing.
   • This is likely the preferred way of showing it and may also be the default.
   • This way, it is also possible to show the icon only in certain states by choosing to
     show it only when important and selecting the states in the Plasmoid's settings.
   • Configuring the size has no effect when the Plasmoid is displayed as part of the
     system tray Plasmoid.
2. It can be added to a panel or the desktop like any other Plasmoid.

This allows you to add multiple instances of the Plasmoid, but it is recommended to choose
only one place. For that, it also makes most sense to ensure the autostart of the
stand-alone tray application is disabled. Otherwise you would end up having two icons
at the same time (one of the Plasmoid and one of the stand-alone application).

The Plasmoid cannot be closed via its context menu, unlike the stand-alone application.
Instead, you have to disable it in the settings of the system tray Plasmoid as explained
before. If you have added the Plasmoid to a panel or the desktop you can delete it like
any other Plasmoid.

If the Plasmoid won't show up, check out the
"Troubleshooting KDE integration" section below for
further help.

Configuring Dolphin integration

The Dolphin integration can be enabled/disabled in Dolphin's context-menu settings. It will
read Syncthing's API key automatically from its configuration file. If your Syncthing configuration file is
not in the default location, you need to select it via the corresponding menu action.

Configuring systemd integration

The next section explains what it is for and how to use it. If it doesn't work on your
system, please read the subsequent sections as well before filing an issue.

Using the systemd integration

With the system configured correctly and systemd support enabled at build-time, the following
features are available:

• Starting and stopping the systemd unit of Syncthing
• Consider the unit status when connecting to the local instance to prevent connection attempts
  when Syncthing isn't running anyway
• Detect when the system has just been resumed from standby to avoid the "Disconnect"
  notification in that case

However, these features are optional. To use them, they must be enabled in the settings dialog
first.

It is recommended to enable "Consider unit status …". Note that Syncthing might not be immediately
ready to serve API requests when the systemd unit becomes active. Therefore, it is still required to configure
a re-connect interval. The re-connect interval will only be in effect while the systemd unit is active.
So despite the re-connect interval, there will be no connection attempts while the systemd unit is
inactive. That is all the systemd integration can optimize in that regard.

By default, Syncthing Tray assumes that the systemd unit is a
user unit. If you are using
a regular system-wide unit (including ones ending with …@username), 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 request it through PolicyKit).

Required system configuration

The communication between Syncthing Tray and systemd is done via systemd's D-Bus service.
That means systemd's D-Bus service (which is called org.freedesktop.systemd1) must be running on
your D-Bus. For user units, the session D-Bus is
used, and for regular units (including ones ending with …@username), the system D-Bus is used.

Systemd's D-Bus service is only available when D-Bus itself is started via systemd. That
is the default under Arch Linux and openSUSE and likely most other modern distributions, where
it is usually started via "socket activation" (e.g. /usr/lib/systemd/user/dbus.socket for the session
D-Bus).

All of this applies to both the session D-Bus and for the system D-Bus, although the startup of the session
D-Bus can be particularly easy to disrupt. One easy way to disrupt it is to start a second instance of
the session D-Bus manually, e.g. via dbus-run-session. When starting the session D-Bus this way, the
systemd integration will not work, and you will likely end up with two session D-Bus processes. It is
also worth noting that you do not need to set the DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS variable manually
because the systemd file dbus.socket should take care of this.

Note that the Plasma Wayland session had issues as described. This has been fixed with
Only spawn dbus-run-session if there isn't a session already;
however, this change might not be available on older distributions.

Configuring the built-in launcher

The built-in launcher can be accessed and configured in the settings dialog. It is not available
in the Plasmoid. It allows you to launch Syncthing

1. as an external process by leaving "Use built-in Syncthing library" unchecked.
   • When launching Syncthing this way, you have to specify the path to an executable, e.g., one you
     have downloaded from the upstream Syncthing website. It is also
     possible to use the Syncthing version built into Syncthing Tray by pointing it to the Syncthing Tray
     executable and specifying the arguments syncthing serve.
   • When launching Syncthing as an external process, Syncthing Tray does not interfere with
     Syncthing's configuration for lowering the priority.
2. as part of the Syncthing Tray UI process by checking "Use built-in Syncthing library".
   • This will always use the Syncthing version built into Syncthing Tray.
   • Launching Syncthing as part of the UI process will interfere with
     Syncthing's configuration for lowering the priority.
     You should therefore avoid using this configuration option or start Syncthing as an external process
     instead. Otherwise, the configuration option might have no effect or will affect the UI of Syncthing
     Tray, causing it to become slow/unresponsive.
   • This option might not be available on your build of Syncthing Tray, e.g., it is disabled on the
     packages I provide for GNU/Linux distributions as it makes the most sense to use the
     distribution-provided version of Syncthing there.

It is recommended to enable "Consider process status …". Note that Syncthing might not be immediately
ready to serve API requests when started. Therefore, it is still required to configure a re-connect interval.
The re-connect interval will only be active while the Syncthing process is running. So despite the
re-connect interval, there will be no connection attempts while the Syncthing process is not running.

Configuring hotkeys

Use the same approach as for launching an application via a hotkey in your graphical
environment. Have it invoke

• syncthingtray --trigger to show the Qt Widgets based tray menu.
• syncthingtray --webui to show the web UI.
• syncthingctl [...] to trigger a particular action. See syncthingctl -h for details.

The Plasmoid can also be shown via a hotkey by configuring one in the Plasmoid settings.

Using the command-line interface

Check out syncthingctl --help and syncthingtray --help for available options. More details
can be found in the CLI documentation.

Download

Check out the download section on the website for an overview.
Keep reading here for a more detailed list.

Source

See the release section on GitHub.

Packages and binaries

• Arch Linux
  • for PKGBUILDs check out my GitHub repository or
    the AUR
  • there is also a binary repository
• Tumbleweed, Leap, Fedora
  • RPM *.spec files and binaries are available via openSUSE Build Service
    • remarks
      • Be sure to add the repository that matches the version of your OS and to keep it
        in sync when upgrading.
      • The linked download pages might be incomplete, use the repositories URL for a full
        list.
      • Old packages might remain as leftovers when upgrading and need to be cleaned up
        manually, e.g. zypper rm libsyncthingconnector1_1_20 libsyncthingmodel1_1_20 libsyncthingwidgets1_1_20.
    • latest releases: download page,
      repositories URL,
      project page
    • Git master: download page,
      repositories URL,
      project page
  • available split packages
    • syncthingtray/syncthingtray-qt6: Qt-widgets based GUI
    • syncthingplasmoid/syncthingplasmoid-qt6: applet/plasmoid for Plasma desktop
    • syncthingfileitemaction/syncthingfileitemaction-qt6: Dolphin/KIO integration
    • syncthingctl/syncthingctl-qt6: command-line interface
• Debian and its derivatives like Ubuntu
  • Every Debian release since 12 (bookworm) has packages for Syncthing Tray that are supported by Debian. These packages may
    also be available on some Debian derivatives as well (e.g. Ubuntu, Pop!_OS, etc). KDE neon is known to not support
    these packages. If your distribution/version does not have the packages then you will have to look into other options.
  • Install packages via:
    • sudo apt install syncthingtray for the generic tray application
    • sudo apt install syncthingtray-kde-plasma for the Plasmoid and other KDE integrations, which is recommended when
      using KDE Plasma
  • Installation from a software center such as GNOME Software or
    Discover is also supported by Debian.
• Exherbo
  • packages for my other project "Tag Editor" and dependencies could serve as a base and are provided
    by the platypus repository
• Gentoo
  • there is a package in Case_Of's overlay
• NixOS
  • the package syncthingtray is available from the official repositories
• Void Linux
  • available as split packages from the
    official repositories:
    • syncthingtray: GUI and command-line interface
    • syncthingtray-plasma: applet/plasmoid for Plasma desktop
    • syncthingtray-dolphin: Dolphin/KIO integration
• Other GNU/Linux systems
  • for generic, self-contained binaries check out the release section on GitHub
    • Requires glibc>=2.26, OpenGL and libX11
      • openSUSE Leap 15, Fedora 27, Debian 10 and Ubuntu 18.04 are recent enough (be sure
        the packages libglx0, libopengl0 and libegl1 are installed on Debian/Ubuntu)
    • Supports X11 and Wayland (set the environment variable QT_QPA_PLATFORM=xcb to disable
      native Wayland support if it does not work on your system)
    • This build of Syncthing Tray bundles OpenSSL because different GNU/Linux distributions come with different incompatible
      versions of that library. It will use your OpenSSL configuration, though. In case that config is not compatible with the
      bundled version of OpenSSL, preventing TLS support from working, you need to set the environment variable OPENSSL_CONF=.
    • The built-in web view is not available in these builts as it would require shipping a full web browser engine.
      Syncthing Tray can still show the official web-based UI in a dedicated window via a Chromium-based browser you have
      already installed using its "app mode". Alternatively, use the distribution-specific builds provided for Arch Linux,
      openSUSE and Fedora which come with the built-in web view enabled.
    • The archive is signed with the GPG key
      B9E36A7275FC61B464B67907E06FE8F53CDC6A4C for manual verification.
    • The executable is signed in addition using ECDSA for verification by the updater. The public key can be found
      in the source code and verification
      is possible with stsigtool or OpenSSL.
  • a Flatpak is hosted on Flathub
    • Read the README of the Flatpak for
      caveats and workarounds
    • File any Flatpak-specific issues on the Flatpak repository
• Windows
  • for binaries check out the release section on GitHub
    • Windows SmartScreen will likely block the execution (you'll get a window saying "Windows protected your PC");
      right click on the executable, select properties and tick the checkbox to allow the execution
    • Antivirus software often wrongly considers the executable harmful. This is a known problem. Please don't create
      issues about it.
    • The default version is using Qt 6 and hence preferred on modern versions of Windows. The oldest version of Windows it
      supports is 64-bit Windows 10 version 1809.
    • The Qt 5 based version should still work on older versions down to Windows 7 although this is not regularly checked.
      • On Windows 7 the bundled Go/Syncthing will nevertheless be too new; use a version of Go/Syncthing that is older
        than 1.21/1.27.0 instead.
    • The Universal CRT needs to be installed.
    • The built-in web view is not available in these builts as it would require shipping a full web browser engine.
      Syncthing Tray can still show the official web-based UI in a dedicated window via a Chromium-based browser you have
      already installed (e.g. Edge or Chrome) using its "app mode".
    • The archive is signed with the GPG key
      B9E36A7275FC61B464B67907E06FE8F53CDC6A4C for manual verification.
    • The executable is signed in addition using ECDSA for verification by the updater. The public key can be found
      in the source code and verification
      is possible with stsigtool or OpenSSL.
  • or, using Winget, type winget install Martchus.syncthingtray in a Command Prompt window.
  • or, using Scoop, type scoop bucket add extras & scoop install extras/syncthingtray.
  • or, via this Chocolatey package, type choco install syncthingtray.
  • for mingw-w64 PKGBUILDs check out my GitHub repository
• Android
  • for APKs check out the release section on GitHub
    • These APKs can be easily installed and updated via Obtanium following this link.
    • The Android app requires Android 9 or later and a device with aarch64 or x86-64 CPU. Be sure to pick the correct download for your device (most likely 64-bit ARM).
• FreeBSD
  • the package syncthingtray is available from FreeBSD Ports
• Mac OS X/macOS
  • the package syncthingtray is available from MacPorts

Contributing, building, developing, building, debugging

There is separate documentation on these topics.

Legal information

Copyright notice and license

Copyright © 2016-2026 Marius Kittler

All code - unless stated otherwise in a comment on top of the file - is licensed under GPL-2-or-later. This does not apply
to code contained in Git repositories included as Git submodule (which contain their own README and licensing information).

Attribution for 3rd party content

Syncthing Tray contains icons from various sources:

• Some icons are taken from Fork Awesome (see their license).
  These are provided via qtforkawesome.
• The Syncthing icons are taken from the Syncthing project.
• The icons on the website are from
  Material Design Icons.
• All other icons found in this repository are taken from the KDE/Breeze project.

None of these icons have been (intentionally) modified so no copyright for modifications is asserted.

Some of the code is based on code from other open source projects:

• Code in syncthingwidgets/quick/quickicon.cpp and the corresponding header file originates from
  Kirigami. The comments at the beginning of those files state the original
  authors/contributors.
• Parts of tray/android/src/io/github/martchus/syncthingtray/Util.java are based on
  Catfriend1/com.nutomic.syncthingandroid.util,
  researchxxl/com.nutomic.syncthingandroid.util and
  Catfriend1/com.nutomic.syncthingandroid.service.
• The icon files ic_stat_notify* under tray/android/res and tray/resources are taken from
  syncthing-android.
• The code in tray/android/src/io/github/martchus/syncthingtray/DocumentsProvider.java is based on
  TermuxDocumentsProvider.java from Termux.
• Many of the descriptions used in the Qt Quick GUI are taken from Syncthing
  and its documentation.
• The uncamel function used in the Qt Quick GUI is taken from Syncthing.

The original code has been modified. Copyright as mentioned in the previous section applies to modifications.