FILES DOWNLOAD

With BitTorrent Sync 1.4, sharing got a lot easier: you no longer have to use Keys (formerly called Secrets) to give others access to folders, though that option is still available. Now you simply send a link to the person you want to share the folder with, he/she clicks it and BTSync walks them through the remaining steps (if any).

For each folder you share, you can select if you want to give the other(s) full read / write access or read only, you can set the link to expire after a period of time, set the link to only be used a number of times and finally, you can choose to share a folder only after you approve the peers:

One note though: in my test under Ubuntu, using the share link directly doesn't work (the browser doesn't recognize the btsync protocol) but there is a simple work-around: in the BTSync web interface click the link icon on the right and paste the link there.

Besides the major change in the way sharing works in BTSync, the latest 1.4 release also comes with a completely redesigned interface, which you can see throughout the screenshots in this article.

Download BitTorrent Sync (for Linux, FreeBSD, Windows, Mac OS X, Android, iOS, Windows Phone and NAS) | AUR (Arch Linux)

To use BitTorrent Sync on Linux, extract the downloaded archive and double click  the "btsync" executable - nothing visible happens when double clicking it because BTSync runs in the background and on Linux, it's controlled through its web interface. Then, open a web browser and enter the following address: http://localhost:8888 - the BTSync user interface will show up, asking you to create an username and (optional) password and then you can start using it:

BitTorrent Sync is a tool that can be used to automatically synchronize files between computers using the BitTorrent protocol, available for Linux, Windows, Mac OS X and NAS devices.

Because it synchronizes the files directly between computers (so without using cloud servers) and the connection is encrypted with a AES cypher and a 256-bit key created on the base of your Secret, BTSync is advertised as a highly secure way of synchronizing your data. However, because the application is not open source, many will argue with this statement.

More about BitTorrent Sync: Technology |  Desktop Manual

Now back to the GUI: BitTorrent Sync comes with a GUI for Windows and Mac, but on Linux there's only a WebUI you can use to control BitTorrent Sync. For this reason, Leo Moll has created an unofficial BitTorrent Sync GUI for Linux. Ubuntu users will also get an AppIndicator (was available for some time) which displays the sync status, can pause the sync, etc.

BitTorrent Sync GUI features:

• add / remove local and remote folders, generate folder (including QR code for mobile devices);
• displays a list of connected devices and their status;
• displays the upload / download speed;
• change the device name ;
• option to limit the upload / download speed;
• option to use NAT UPnP port mapping;
• option to set listening port;
• advanced preferences: folder rescan interval, limit local peers, encrypt lan data and more.

In my test, I didn't find any bugs, but there are a few things that couldn't be implemented in the BTSync GUI, due to missing API: you can only see the active transfers speed, but not what's being transferred and also there's no transfer history yet.

To add the unofficial BitTorrent Sync PPA in Ubuntu and derivatives (Linux Mint, elementary OS, etc.) as well as in Debian, use the following commands:

sudo apt-get install curl
sh -c "$(curl -fsSL http://debian.yeasoft.net/add-btsync-repository.sh)"

- with Ubuntu AppIndicator (the difference is that this package installs the AppIndicator dependencies):

sudo apt-get install btsync-gui

sudo apt-get install btsync-gui-gtk