SyncTime Contact

If you want to report a problem or suggest a new feature, please write a comment on this page. Every feedback is welcome!

Please have a look at the Help topics first, which may already have an answer for you.

Your name and your comment can be made public so that other users can profit as well. Your email will only be used to message you privately. Your comment won’t be published right away, but every single one will be taken care of as soon as possible.

To help you as efficiently as possible, please also specify your macOS, iPadOS or iOS version, and the app version.

Kommentare

789 responses to “SyncTime Contact”

  1. Knut Næss Avatar

    I have been using your program for many years on my Mac machine to copy thousands of photos to clients and other places. It works 100 % perfect, and I love it. But now I like to copy files from my laptop PC to an external HD, without using a network. Do your program work from a PC. Regards Knut Næss, Norway

    1. No, unfortunately there is no PC version of SyncTime. It’s not that I’m against this, but it would require me to first rewrite all the code, since from what I know at the moment there is no automated way of reusing any of it, and second because then I would need to keep both copies updated at the same time, meaning double the effort for anything I change, which is not feasible for me at the moment.

  2. Can you please help me how I can sync between an external hard drive and the iCloud Drive over my Mac? Thus depending on the *name* of the SSD external hard drive which I attach to the Mac, the respective folders shall be synced *automatically after mounting* with direction iCloud >> hard drive. Thus SSD1 shall sync only iCloudFolder1 and SSD2 shall sync only iCloudFolder2 without manual action within 1 Minute after having connected the relevant SSD to the Mac. Is this possible?

    1. You just have to click on the + button in the toolbar, type a name in the title field, select Automatic in the Sync Schedule popup button, click on the left folder icon to select your iCloud Drive subfolder, click on the right folder icon to select your external drive subfolder, and click Add.

  3. Sync Time suddenly stopped working — all established syncs have disappeared and clicking the plus sign does nothing, so I cannot re-add the disappeared syncs. How can I get it working again? Is there a way to reinstall it?

    I have been running Sync Time version 4.2.2 on Mac OS 10.13.4 successfully for some time. There have been no recent changes to the OS.

    1. You’re right, there is an issue with macOS that prevents it from running some code that I added in the last update. I will publish an update that corrects this in the next days.

  4. ich will meine Foto Mediathek mit Ihrem Programm auf einer andern Festplatte sichern, bekomme jedoch immer die Fehler Meldung “03.12.22, 17:56:56: Fehler beim Durchsuchen von „Fotos-Mediathek_Steffen.photoslibrary“” Wenn ich mir jedoch die Festplatte anschaue, dann ist dort eine Kopie der Fotomeditahek vorhanden , die sogar größer ist als die eigentliche Mediathek
    Wie bekomme ich diesen Fehler behoben ?

    1. If you denied access to your Photos library, this help article should help you, in particular the section “Privacy settings”: Sync errors.

  5. Just downloaded SyncTime Lite from the App Store – works great so far ! However the app is in German ? How can I switch language to English ?

    1. SyncTime currently supports both English and German. macOS will launch an app in the first of your preferred languages that is also supported by the app, and in your case it seems like you have German higher in the list than English. You can change this in the System Preferences, under General > Language & Region. At the top you can change your preferred languages, and at the bottom you can select specific apps to use a specific language.

  6. Hi
    First a big thank you for providing such a useful and simple App.
    I want to run a script once all Sync tasks are completed. However everytime it reverts to “DO NOTHING” How can I make my Script permanent selection please.

    Macbook Air (M1)

    Stay blessed !

    1. That’s correct, the option to run a script after all syncs have finished is reset after the script is run. This is to prevent scripts that shut the Mac down or put it to sleep to be executed shortly after the Mac is restarted or woken up again, in case the syncs run automatically. If you have only one sync item, you can select a custom action in the Advanced tab of that sync item’s settings, which do not reset the script after it is executed.
      If you have more than one sync item: some users are not aware that when syncing, say, their Desktop, Documents, Movies and Pictures folders, they don’t necessarily have to create 4 distinct sync items, but can create a single one where they select the common parent folder, exclude it, and include the subfolders they want to sync (see Filters).
      Otherwise, the only other solution I can suggest right now is to make a dependency chain, i.e. adding the last sync items as dependencies to the first sync item (also in the Advanced settings of the first sync item), and select the custom script in the settings of the first sync item. Then whenever you run that first sync item, all the other ones will be run first, and when the first one completes, the script is executed.

  7. Help! Downloaded the latest version from the App Store and SyncTime won’t properly open. Get this message: “The data couldn’t be written because of an error in the destination for the data.”
    Hope to hear from you soon.

    1. That error currently appears whenever launching the app with some particular settings. I’ve just submitted a new update 4.2.1 that should be reviewed by Apple soon.

  8. Ricky McCarley Avatar
    Ricky McCarley

    I get an error on every directory. “Error setting metadata for . Can this be fixed? Thank you!

    1. I noticed that if I try to set a custom icon for a folder that is on an external USB stick using the FAT or exFAT format, the icon doesn’t change and instead a file named “Icon?” is created inside it. A stick using the APFS format worked. I suspect that’s an issue with macOS Ventura, since this all used to work in the past …
      I’ve created a new question here: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/254371673
      Maybe someone will offer an explanation soon? Although I usually don’t have any hope to hear an official answer from Apple; we should feel lucky if we get any feedback from other users at all.
      I invite everyone who has the same issue to click the “I have this question too” button, or to add a comment to let Apple know how many users have this problem.

  9. J.C. Dijeres Avatar
    J.C. Dijeres

    Hi, any chance to add an option for synctime to start minimized? Before MacOs Ventura you could do this at the login items page, but apple as since removed that option.

    1. That’s right, it seems like the option to launch apps minimized on login has been removed. There is a discussion going on about this matter already: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/254316582
      I invite everyone who has the same issue to click the “I have this question too” button, or to add a comment to let Apple know how many users are wondering why that option was removed. Still, I will try to find another solution as soon as possible.

  10. Hi,

    I have noticed if SyncTime is processing / making a backup from a disk and the destination disk becomes full, there is no error message to inform you of this. The processing of files continues, but the remaining time keeps increasing to days, but it still actively shows its copying different file names. What is happening here? Why does it stop and tell me the destination disk is full?

    Thanks

    1. You’re right, there’s no error shown if there is not enough space on the destination volume. Some time ago it was shown in the confirmation dialog, but I see now that because of a programming error it isn’t shown anymore. I will also make sure that if the confirmation dialog is skipped or confirmed and there is still not enough space, the sync will abort with an error. Please note that the sync might still be very slow when the destination volume has only a very low amount of available space, which would not cause any error to be shown.

  11. Good morning
    I am using SyncTime under Osx Ventura

    Each startup of the system, SyncTime is launched perfectly, but a SyncTime window is opened with the Current task and a green dot.

    I would like SyncTime to work only as a background task without opening windows at each startup … ( SyncTime must work fully Hidden )

    Best regards
    Francis

    1. You’re right, I didn’t notice that they had redesigned the whole System Preferences in macOS 13. I did a little research and I couldn’t find an easy solution yet, but it seems that other users are facing the same issue with other apps: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/254321613
      I will try to find another solution as soon as possible.

  12. caoquynguyen Avatar
    caoquynguyen

    I buy synctime yesterday, but when I click to [Filter and tick to filter files matching any of the follwing expressions:] –> [+] –> Filename –> and crash… I have try with another mac and it crashed to.
    2 mac run on mac os ventura beta 9. Thanks

    1. With the official macOS 13 release there is indeed a change that causes a crash. I’ll fix it with an update soon.

    2. This is also happening to me on the now non-beta version of Ventura. Doesn’t happen to every sync I click on Filters. But reliably on some.

      Thanks for investigating.

      1. An update just got approved on the App Store that should fix this issue.

  13. Hello,
    this backup setting is supposed to only copy changed files, but for every sync the whole dataset is being copied again.

    Please refer to the screenshots under this link: https://we.tl/t-QhOm2Go3pa

    Best,
    Nils

    1. This seems to be an issue with some devices connected via some protocols like SMB. I will fix this in the next update.

  14. Tim Herget Avatar
    Tim Herget

    I’m using a WDmycloud to back up files from my mac OS 12.6. The modification date is being up dated during the sync to the current date and time. In some of the blogs it talks about AFP but that doesn’t seem to be available. SMB protocol is SMB2, SMB3
    NT lan manager is NTLMv2 only Do you know how I should change the setup?

    1. This seems to be an issue with some devices connected via some protocols like SMB. The update that just got approved should fix this.

  15. Hi,

    I mirrored my data to a network drive (SMB). It worked great!

    Later, when I repeated the synchronization, all data were marked as to be copied again. By comparing the source and destination folder, I noticed that the already copied files have creation/modification date/time different from the source files (actually, the time they were copied). So the time stamp of source/destination differed and they should be overwritten?

    How is it possible to preserve the creation/modification time stamps of the original file when they are copied? Is it a problem with my network mount?

    1. This seems to be an issue with some devices connected via some protocols like SMB. The update that just got approved should fix this.

  16. Cant attach a photo. but just noticed this bug?

    I am using SyncTime to keep a back up of my iTunes folder but while doing some tag maintenance I noticed that SyncTime is not noticing changes in CASE in a folder name.

    Example: The folder name for a Album was “Don’t Tell A Soul” I retagged the files and set the folder name to “Don’t Tell a Soul” (lower case A”) but on my destination drive I have BOTH folders still present. SyncTime is not deleting the old folder and replacing it with the new version and all the files within, I get double the Album tracks one set in each folder.

    Is there a setting I am missing?

    1. I will try to fix this and publish an update in the following days.

  17. I use sync time to sync my Mac desktop with a folder in onedrive since you cannot select the desktop folder in OneDrive for Mac. This worked great but recently (new M2 Mac and update) when I save something directly to the desktop vs. moving it to the desktop the app always crashes.

    To try to fix this I was messing with settings. I turned on dependencies (unsure what it was) and now the SyncTime app won’t even run long enough to make any changes and just immediately crashes every time.

    Reinstalling did not work. How can I uninstall and delete all cache or saved files across my Mac to start all over again?

    1. The crash is due to a circular dependency that you probably created by adding the sync item as its own dependency, which normally is not possible, but due to a bug is currently possible. To circumvent this, you can start SyncTime while pressing the Option key on your keyboard, which temporarily disables the dependencies. (A dependency is a sync item that is run before the current one.)
      I just published an update that should fix this and the other issue as well, which was caused by adding files in two-way background syncs.

  18. Hi,

    I am using the app to backup a folder on a USB key. When starting manually « run sync » the backup task from the icon in Mac OS bar, if the USB is not present, I have no visual info to let me know something went wrong and no sync has occurred.

    Thanks for your help.

    Regards,

    jeff

    1. You’re right, that’s something I can improve. I will fix this in the next update so that an error notification appears.

  19. David Jameson Avatar
    David Jameson

    Tried SyncTime lite — worked great, so I bought SyncTime, opened it and the sync group that I created with SyncTime lite was gone — would have been nice if SyncTime could have pulled it in automatically!

    1. You’re right, ideally the settings in the Lite version should be automatically imported in SyncTime. I assumed that most users would just create some casual sync items to try out the features and later create the real sync items if they bought the full version, but I see that this might not always be the case. I’ll be happy to improve this part in one of the next updates.

  20. Arnaud Galand Avatar
    Arnaud Galand

    I’ve added SyncTime in the Login Items as I want it to start every time I boot up my Mac. The only con is that I have the “Confirm one-way sync” window that shows up, and once I click Ok, the main window appears.
    I’d just want to have the app to start minimized or in the background, so I don’t have to deal with those windows each time I boot up my computer.
    Is there any way?

    1. In order for the login item to be hidden on startup, you have to enable the corresponding checkbox in the System Settings where you added the login item.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *