2x Macs - how best to sync

[The Samurai]

Hi everyone

Unsure of where to post this but here goes.

Ive got a 14” m1 macbook pro which is almost always connected to monitors in a desk station setup.

I want to get a 2nd (lighter) m2 macbook air for when on the road or trips outside the house.

Is there a way where some of my files or documents can sync between the two rather than me having to manually rely on dropbox or onedrive which im not a really a fan of?


thanks in advance

 

[chrfr]

Hi everyone

Unsure of where to post this but here goes.

Ive got a 14” m1 macbook pro which is almost always connected to monitors in a desk station setup.

I want to get a 2nd (lighter) m2 macbook air for when on the road or trips outside the house.

Is there a way where some of my files or documents can sync between the two rather than me having to manually rely on dropbox or onedrive which im not a really a fan of?


thanks in advance

iCloud and OneDrive can both automatically sync the desktop and documents folders. Why would Dropbox or OneDrive be a manual process for you? Anything you put in the Dropbox or OneDrive folders will sync between computers automatically.

 

[The Samurai]

iCloud and OneDrive can both automatically sync the desktop and documents folders. Why would Dropbox or OneDrive be a manual process for you? Anything you put in the Dropbox or OneDrive folders will sync between computers automatically.

I meant to say that i normally work on local filea (saving to documents and desktop). Perhaps the first option you mention with icloud will work best. Thank you

 

[seggy]

iCloud is the most no brainer which would suit most Mac people best, but if you are able to figure basic things out and want to keep two sets of local files in sync, then there are solutions like https://syncthing.net/ (open source) or https://www.resilio.com/individuals/ (paid, generally works better). Both use similar tech - basically bittorrent - to keep two or more laptop's folders (and phones/tablets) in sync.

 

[chrfr]

I meant to say that i normally work on local filea (saving to documents and desktop). Perhaps the first option you mention with icloud will work best. Thank you

If you’re already using OneDrive you can just enable that feature. However, I use OneDrive to sync my work files and on my home computers I use iCloud. iCloud is a more natural setup for Mac users- there are file naming limitations in OneDrive that can be annoying sometimes.
Here’s how you enable the sync in OneDrive: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint/redirect-known-folders-macos

 

[gilby101]

If you want to avoid cloud sync services like OneDrive, Dropbox, and iCloud there are two use cases for synchronising selected folders:

1) Sync when your MBA and MBP are at the same location, but don't need to sync whilst on the road: Chronosync is the best for that and is built for the Mac. Maybe a little costly, but I have never had to pay for an upgrade. https://www.econtechnologies.com/product/chronosync/

2) Sync from wherever and whenever: Resilio Sync (paid version is best) does real-time end-to-end encrypted sync between devices and (when configured to do so) maintains extended attributes (e.g. Finder tags) and generally works better on a Mac than alternatives. https://www.resilio.com/

[The post from @seggy has reminded me to re-evaluate Syncthing compared with Resilio. If nothing else it has more active development.]

However, I would say that using a cloud sync service is considerably easier.