For those of you who use multiple Macs, what steps do you take to keep them in sync? What services do you use, etc?

@Mtt I've never tried to keep two Macs entirely in sync, but to work from home and the office, I kept my files in the cloud, back then Dropbox. (I was not working for a place that required special security measures.) This let me edit from anywhere with an iPad too.

The only other thing I did was to put the preference files for certain apps in the cloud, which I pointed to with symlinks. This was mainly BBEdit and Keyboard Maestro. I can't remember what other apps I did this for.

So not syncing, but keeping common files available and managing preferences and keyboard shortcuts that mattered to me.

As far as updates went, I had those mainly on autopilot.

Caveat: I haven't worked in an office since the pandemic began.

@Mtt same as John, I use iCloud, iCloud Drive, and GitHub. This has worked really well with very few issues. I use the same strategy for setting up a new computer. Just be a little disciplined about where you store your data.

@Mtt syncthing is very good

@markstoneman That's really what I'm looking for. I'm trying to work out the details in scenarios where I use things like iCloud and Google Drive alongside Hazel, for example. I'll probably have to limit Hazel to one device so it's not processing the same folders/files multiple times.

@johnchandler Are you storing Github stuff locally or in iCloud? Basically, are you pulling from a repo on each device after you commit something, or are you letting that sync via iCloud instead?

@7robots Yeah, I keep going back and forth about getting a computer at my work desk. I've been carrying a laptop back and forth for years (docking it at work). It's a good setup, just exploring if I want to make a change.

@Jonah Thanks. I'll have to look into it.

@Mtt All the git stuff is local only, and not in syncing folders, so I don't risk any versioning issues. Especially as I move in and out of branches. I just have to remember to push it back and forth... most of the time I do. :)

@Mtt it is peer to peer synchronization without up, selling or hosting concerns, and includes time expiring versioning in case of conflict. The only time I had issues is, it is very cautious about deleting conflicts so you could end up with some time stamped duplicates in case of conflict.

@johnchandler I understand what you mean with the most thing, I've run into that with an occasional Working Copy tweak on iOS.

@jonah Do you use that alongside something like Dropbox/iCloud? Or only that?

@johnchandler yes, to this. syncing a git repo into an iCloud Drive folder WILL cause sync'ing issues -- especially if your other iCloud-enabled computer is also using git! I discovered this first hand and wound up moving my local git folders out of iCloud Drive. No issues since.

@Mtt i would run a central server (RPi) running Syncthing on a powered HD, making for a simple cloud (where i would keep versioning backups); all devices peer to peer sync, with that as fallback. I switched to nextcloud on a RPi4 with cloudflared, as webdav was useful for lots of other connections and played nicer with iOS (syncthing best with all except iOS)

@Jonah Oh, now you're talking nerdy to me. I've done NAS (mostly Synology) stuff and I am currently running a headless Mac mini as a media/security/homebridge server. But I've never done anything with RPi. I probably need to dive into that more.

@Mtt i use yunohost for the Rpi -- still working on a backup solution for that since Raid isn't set up. i'd use a mac mini if i had a spare