Insert taunts below, but I chose to stop using owncloud/Nextcloud after considering several options for my macOS Sierra Server, including: Seafile, Tonido, Pyd.io, CEPH, ownCloud/Nextcloud, BitTorrent Sync, and Syncthing.

The ownCloud/Nextcloud gang was ruled out as the project doesn’t support installation on Mac OS X Server, and this despite folks like me who have run ownCloud on Macs for years with only minor issues. ownCloud/Nextcloud seem to offer many more features than I want, which is just to sync files across several devices.

Of the options I considered, only Tonido, CEPH, and BitTorrent Sync seemed to offer Mac support and then I was fortunate to read about Syncthing. It seemed to have most of the advantages of BitTorrent Sync, only its open source and potentially more difficult to set up.

I dove in and set up Syncthing on my MacBook Pro, macOS Sierra server, and my work’s Dell laptop running Win7. So far syncs are working like a champ across all devices. This post lays out what steps I used to get the titled apps running on macOS Sierra and Win7:

1. Download brew from http://brew.sh – open Terminal.app and paste in the code from brew.sh or use the following two commands: “sudo xcodebuild -license” and “/usr/bin/ruby -e “$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install)””.
2. Install syncthing in Terminal.app, executing “brew install syncthing” – when prompted at the end, also enable the autolaunching feature “brew services start syncthing”.
3. Optional step – Install syncthing-inotify in Terminal.app, executing “brew install syncthing-inotify” – when prompted at the end, also enable the autolaunching feature “brew services start syncthing-inotify”.
4. Download Qsyncthingtray from https://github.com/sieren/QSyncthingTray/releases and drag it to your Applications folder.
5. Open System Preferences and add Qsyncthingtray to your Login items.
6. Unmount the installer images.
7. Launch Qsyncthingtray by double-clicking it from /Applications or from Spotlight or other launcher.
8. Configure Qsyncthingtray’s preferences to be aware of the file path of Syncthing, I told mine ~/Applications/Syncthing/usr/local/bin/syncthing, and for Syncthing-inotify, /usr/local/bin/syncthing-inotify:

Windows instructions:

1. Download and open up syncthing’s official installer.
2. Configure Task Scheduler to autolaunch syncthing when computer boots up, using these instructions.
3. Download Qsyncthingtray from https://github.com/sieren/QSyncthingTray/releases and drag it to your Applications folder.
4. Optional step – Download Syncthing-inotify.
5. Launch Qsyncthingtray by double-clicking it from c:/Program Files or by searching for it.
6. Enter Qsyncthingtray’s preferences by right-clicking the Qsyncthingtray’s icon in Windows’ system tray in the lower right corner of the screen.
7. Click the “” tab and specify the file paths for where you saved Syncthing and Syncthing-inotify and check the “Launch” box for each.
8. Finally, add a shortcut for Qsyncthingtray to the Startup Items folder. In Windows 7, that folder was here:

If you want screenshots showing the setup of a single shared folder across all devices, let me know in the comments.