Last night I installed and have been using BitTorrent Sync, a syncing utility to keep files and folders up to date on all of your machines.

In the past I was using DropBox, but for a number of reasons I dropped them. One of the big ones was that I found myself not storing as many files in their service. Even though they claimed that files were encrypted on their server and could not be read, I never felt comfortable keeping my secure files there.

Last night I saw a tweet by Wil Wheaton. He was talking about how he had a seemless switch to BitTorrent Sync, a product I have heard of, but never researched. The interesting thing about BitTorrent Sync is that it doesn't use a central server to store your files. It uses a peer-to-peer mechanism to sync files from one computer to another. It does this using the BitTorrent protocol.

There is also a pretty handy way to setup an iOS device with the product. All you have to do is download the app from the App Store and then scan a QR code. This connects up your device. The mobile app also has a password you can enter to prevent others from getting your files.

Is BitTorrent Sync perfect? No. The iOS app does not automatically sync files. There isn't even a setting for that. You have to manually select a file and it will start a transfer from one of your other machines. Also, to get around Firewall and NAT issues, BitTorrent Sync makes use of relay servers to get your files from one machine behind a firewall to another machine. Luckily you can disable the usage of relay servers in the settings, but that means that if BitTorrent Sync can't access inside your firewall at home, you can't sync.

For my casual usage of syncing, the pros outweigh the cons. I have been very happy with it so far. I have been able to unify my old DropBox sync and manual sync folders. I also like the name of the default sync folder. It is ~/Sync on Mac. In my opinion that is nicer than the branded ~/DropBox folder.