opened 11:16PM - 18 Mar 17 UTC
backlog
improves: ux
phase: planning
size: large
**Vote on this issue on [the forum](https://forum.activitywatch.net/t/synchroniz…ation-between-devices/264)!**
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There are two usage issues with ActivityWatch at the moment to which syncing is a solution:
- If you use more than one device, you need to check every device individually, or run one centralized instance of aw-server (not recommended!)
- If a machine is lost, so is the data (the user could have exported it, but data stored after the export would still be lost). While ActivityWatch cannot replace a proper backup system, syncing could help by storing copies of the data across devices.
I know of two interesting solutions to this problem:
- Centralized server which stores all data encrypted (the server is unable to decrypt)
- Issues: Centralized, single point of failure
- Done by @StandardNotes
- P2P synchronization (encrypted, possibly including relays)
- Done by @Syncthing very well, perhaps we could use it in some way. Also: MPL2 licensed and written in Go.
- Downside: Clients must be online at the same time for sync.
- They have the ability to set some folders to "read only", useful when you want to ensure the data stays intact in its source.
- Implementing it ourselves would be an enormous effort, I assume.
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