Selfhosted

I hate Nextcloud and will recommend OwnCloud. NC is such a clusterfuck of a UI and full of abandoned third party software.

For that use case, go syncthing. Nextcloud would be overkill. I run both, I use syncthing for my personal files and Nextcloud when they should be shared with others.

Syncthing is a better fit for your use case. As much as I appreciate having my Nextcloud setup, it can also be a pain in the ass some times.

Syncthing because it's p2p/ local-first. Meaning it's robust to interruptions.

Syncthing on Android has an option to only sync when on AC battery. The PC client might have a similar option. If not, you could probably configure something similar via systemd or udev under Linux.

I don't think syncthing has proper means to synchronize contacts or anything else that's not file-based though.

I use syncthing and prefer it for synchronizing files between my devices.

Quick pros/cons from what I've read (correct me if I'm wrong - I've not used syncthing myself):

syncthing

Pros:

• Easy to setup and use.
• No infrastructure to maintain
• Will sync directories between computers

Cons:

• Uses third party resources to sync by default (can setup direct sync if needed/wanted however)
• Only does directory synchronization

Nextcloud

Pros:

• Can synchronize directories
• Entire synchronization pipeline is under your control
• Offers a lot more functionality if you want it (WebDAV, Calendars, public shares with "anyone with URL can view" permission, etc.)

Cons:

• You need to setup/maintain your Nextcloud server
• Can be fiddly to setup for some (wasn't for me - but lots of people do complain about it).

I just use a Samba server behind wireguard.

Never had a chance to give syncthing a shot, but nextcloud works very well. On top of that, if you ever want to ditch apple/google - it will also happily sync your contacts, calendar, etc, as well as more niche stuff like bike rides. It can become chonky, but that really depends on how much stuff you're asking it to do.

Having setup both, ive found syncthing to be much simpler. I would probably not go through the headache of setting up https and databases for next cloud again...

I personally switched from NextCloud to Syncthing.

Syncthing:

• is easier for me to maintain,
• allows for the "server" to be behind NAT,
• lets me have multiple "servers" at the same time (eg. something at home and a VPS)
• lets me have certain "servers" set as untrusted, so all data on them is encrypted, while others can have it unencrypted for easier access I put "server" in quotes, as Syncthing doesn't really have a server, all clients are equal peers.

On the other hand, NextCloud:

• gives me a way to share files by link with others,
• lets me browse files via a web interface,
• mobile app lets me access files as I need them instead of having to synchronize everything.

They are very different things. If all of the places where you want to access the data have storage large enough to accommodate all of it syncthing is probably easier. If however you also want to access the data from your phone, then syncthing won't work, because it will sync the entire folder to your phone, there's no way to use it like you would Nextcloud, i.e. only downloading things as you need them.

I would go with syncthing, it uses far fewer resources, is rock solid and out of your way.

A single folder and power consumption is important --> syncthing. It doesn't have great power consumption, but since the devices aren't constantly on, you can just start syncthing up on the portable devices when needed. You can configure syncthing to sync when connecting to a specific Wifi, when power saving mode is turned off, I think even specific times.

It'll run fine on a server and can be configured .

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