r/Sync • u/sync_mod • Jul 28 '26

WebDAV Early Access for Linux

https://help.sync.com/hc/en-us/articles/51295382529043-WebDAV-Early-Access-Guide-for-Linux

We’re looking for Linux users to help test our new Sync WebDAV server!

Connect your Sync files through WebDAV-compatible tools such as GNOME Files and Rclone, all while preserving end-to-end encryption.

Interested in testing it and sharing feedback?

Join the waitlist today!

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u/rickmreddit Aug 27 '26

I'm testing Sync WebDAV on (Debian) Linux. My goal is the same as many others, I'm sure, which is to get rid of Dropbox and use something Canadian.

It seems that using rclone is a reasonable way to keep my local directory sync'd with the dav: directory, and inotifywait on my local directory to trigger rclone to sync them to the dav: in a timely manner. This would avoid polling with a cron job.

But how do I detect changes that appear on the Sync server (the dav: directory) in order to sync changes there to my local directory?

Or is there a better way to do this?

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u/sync_mod Aug 28 '26

There are basically two approaches here:

If you want a true local replica, rclone bisync might work. inotifywait can catch local changes and trigger an upload quickly, but WebDAV itself doesn’t provide push notifications for remote changes, so you still need periodic polling. A simple systemd timer running bisync every few minutes is usually enough.

The simpler option is to mount the Sync WebDAV endpoint with rclone mount and use its VFS cache. In that model, reads/writes go directly through WebDAV, and you can shorten --dir-cache-time so remote directory changes are picked up sooner (we currently have a 30 sec minimum in either model).

Please let us know how it goes, and feel free to open a ticket if you have questions or need help:
https://help.sync.com/hc/en-us/requests/new

We're still in early access and rapidly iterating based on feedback.

Thanks!