I’ve read here before that Dropbox is recommended as the reliable sync choice, in my case between Mac mini and Macbook Air. I’m getting to the point where my free Dropbox space is almost full, but it seems a shame to spend money upgrading when I have lots of space available in my iCloud drive, for example. Has the official L&L advice changed at all?
Check the recent discussion here: Scrivener on two devices. Dropbox or not?
You can use iCloud, but I have always found that it can be slow, and, unlike Dropbox doesn’t show you in the menu bar whether all is in sync or not.
For other reasons, I use Sync.com rather than Dropbox (which I have but use for other purposes) for Scrivener projects. They say it is unsuitable for Scrivener because of Scrivener’s complex format, but in over 10 years, neither I nor my collaborator have had any problems with Sync.
Mark
Thanks dirkhaun, although the alternative method linked in that discussion looks more complex than the straightforward syncing I’m used to.
Thanks also xiamenese. This sounds promising, so I’m going to give sync.com a try, at first by shifting some of my less important sync files there and seeing how that goes. Could be a good solution!
I used to have a paid Dropbox account, but as my business needs changed I chose to “drop” it and rely on the “free” service (as long as it lasts, I suppose.
I found when I also was creeping up on consuming that space I had a lot of stuff that didn’t need to be there, and if I needed an online/sync service I moved quite a bit of stuff to another “cloud” sync service. A significant portion was simply stuff best stored elsewhere as archival data.
I use Dropbox now for that stuff that really really must have reliable synching. Apple’s Cloud is often temperamental, unreliable, and not worth the time and effort to detect issues, and then find it impossible to fix anyway. Works for some, but I have other things to do.
I thought I’d written the original post here in the general Scriv-for-Mac forum, but it’s ended up here. Wrong place?
Anyway, xiamenese, I’m under way with Sync and looking good. One thing: first off, Sync creates a syncing folder, much like Dropbox, and when I put a few of my Scriv projects in there as a test, it made them zip files. Is that usual? I just unzipped them and deleted the zips, and it seems to be updating and syncing between my two machines very well. But not sure why the zips originally. Can’t see a setting or anything.
Dearest Moderator, given the note at the head of this Other Software & Development forum, where this post ended up without my intention for it to do so, could you move this to the general Scriv-for-Mac forum, please?
I can’t help you with why you’re getting zipped files … I never have, and since every new Scrivener project I create goes straight to my Sync folder, it’s years since I tried moving an existing project into it. But as long as it is working for you …
I have my Scrivener backups zipped and going to iCloud … £0.79/month for 50GB … and I do regular local backups to externals too.
Mark
Dropbox is still the recommended sync platform and is required for syncing to iOS devices. If you’re just syncing between two computers, you can use some other services like OneDrive and Box. You can check out any active advisories we have on platforms with known issues here.
Scrivener projects are actually not compatible with iCloud for syncing purposes. If you use iCloud to go between devices, you will eventually lose data. It’s fine to keep projects in a folder that backs up to iCloud but this should not be used to go between devices. You can read about future iCloud compatibility here.
Mark and JenT, thanks, all good to know.