How to Install Syncthing on Ubuntu

Syncthing rocks. I use it to keep my notes and docs synced between my two laptops and it’s never let me down. Recently one of my laptops went kaput after an OS upgrade and I was forced to set everything up from scratch (including Syncthing). Thankfully it’s pretty easy to set up.

Steps

Install it via the apt package. (instructions taken from here)

sudo mkdir -p /etc/apt/keyrings
sudo curl -L -o /etc/apt/keyrings/syncthing-archive-keyring.gpg https://syncthing.net/release-key.gpg
echo "deb [signed-by=/etc/apt/keyrings/syncthing-archive-keyring.gpg] https://apt.syncthing.net/ syncthing stable" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/syncthing.list
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install syncthing

Set up a systemd service.

sudo nano /etc/systemd/system/syncthing.servce and enter the following:

[Unit]
Description=Syncthing Daemon

[Service]
Type=simple
ExecStart=/usr/bin/syncthing
User=$YOUR_USER_HERE

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Enable and start the service.

sudo systemctl enable syncthing.service
sudo systemctl start syncthing.service

Then check for any errors in systemctl status syncthing. If everything worked, you can access the web UI at http://127.0.0.1:8034 and start customizing Syncthing.