I've got a couple of Raspberry Pi Zero's that emulate a mass storage device (basically it acts like a USB drive) that I have connected to 3D printers and my wife's embroidery machine.

Instead of using it with a network share like in the link, I share the folder with SyncThing.

It's super convenient to not have to move a USB drive around and can just leave it connected and get the files on there seamlessly.

I use it to synchronise RetroArch save states across my devices - desktop PC, Android TV, and Android handheld.

Installation on phone from F-droid (Syncthing-fork) gives a 1-way share of your Camera to backup to PC whenever you get back home. That's my top usecase... Together with syncing KeePass database since long ago too.

I have a site to site VPN between my house and my mother's house. I keep a raspberry pi at her house with a 2TB drive running syncthing. My photo library and important documents sync to her house as an offsite backup in case my house ever burned to the ground.

as far as syncing files between PC and laptop, I would think ownCloud would be better suited for that.

I don't know if these are uncommon but I have a few cool usecases besides the regular 1:1 folder syncing, maybe someone else finds them useful.

Also you should know that the way I have all of this setup is that I have a container that hosts a bunch of SMB Network drives and a syncthing container that stores all of the fodlers on that drive. Having them also easily accessible through smb is great when I just wanna quickly copy something or back the folders up.

So here are some of my maybe unorthodoz usecases :

• Music - As a fan of offline music, I have it setup that music I acquire gets synced onto the server and re-encoded as opus through a script into a second folder which then through syncthing gets sent out my mobile devices. There I rather have smaller files than lossless quality. Said script also sorts the music into folders based on artist and album metadata.
• I also sync my Newpipe Subscriptions between phones (unfortunately by manually exporting my settings and re-importing them)

I also used to have a setup that would sync Minecraft Bedrock and Stardew Valley saves between devices (where Windows and Android saves are compatible) but Android 11 introduced a stupid restriction that prevents synching from accessing the the saves are located on Android.

Working for a sip provider.

We used syncthing to sync sound files between sip servers. Things like voicemail, call recordings, hold music, menu options.

I have become quite invested in Logseq, noting down everything from terminal commands, to shopping lists and recipes. Syncing the .md files between my desktop, laptop phone and work pc with ST works amazing.

Echoing other comments, my backup strategy for all our devices is: Syncthing to replicate data to my NAS, restic to generate encrypted backups, and then cron+rclone to offsite those backups to Google Drive.

I absolutely love this setup.

1. It works anywhere. Syncthing takes care of firewall punching and all that so whether I'm at home or on the road, I know the data is being replicated correctly.

2. It's immediate. Syncthing doesn't run on some schedule. It's constantly replicating so I know at minimum there's a copy of all my data if something catastrophic happens.

3. It's private, encrypted, and entirely in my control.

4. The setup is built of composable parts that can each be understood, modified, and debugged easily.

Normally I'm a little cautious about rolling my own infrastructure for something critical like backups, but this setup is so simple and robust that I just don't worry about it.

Other use cases I've come up with:

1. I use Paperless as a DMS. It has a watch folder for automatically ingesting documents. I set up Genius Scan + Syncthing on my phone, syncing scans to the Paperless drop folder, so I can scan from my phone and automatically upload to Paperless without any additional app. Just scan and off it goes.

2. For a while I was playing Subnautica on my Steam Deck and my gaming rig. Subnautica doesn't support the Steam Cloud so I used Syncthing to replicate the save data across my gaming devices.

Not particularly weird or outlandish, but of course I also use Syncthing to replicate my keepass database across devices as well.

I also have a personal wiki of Markdown notes that I sync between my laptop and phone using Syncthing.

Oh, and I use it to replicate my Calibre library between my laptop and my calibre-web server.

Basically it's my swiss army knife of "I have data over here, I need to get that data over there" and it's amazing!

I mod my games on my PC and sync it to my SteamDeck. I also sync the save files back and fourth, to continue playing on different devices. Mostly non-steam games.

I also sync my eBook collection to my eink reader with syncthing.

Everything is also mirrored to my always-on NAS, so syncing always works.

Using it in an enterprise environment?

Sending files from my phone to my laptop - just copy them to a special folder and boom, sent 😁

For a while I was exchanging encrypted backups with a friend. An easy way to offside without granting shell accounts.

Currently just use it for backing up KeePass and uni files across two laptops and a phone.

I think it would be fun to use it for storing DRM free games (like from GOG) and sharing them with friends. Create a big dump of games and share them with each other. Maybe even share save files in games where that's common.

Sync (one-way) from our phones to an always on tablet in the house - the screensaver is a photo gallery so now we actually SEE those photos we take.

Just update the exclusion list (on the tablet) every now and again to ignore older photos (ie 2023-10*) and it keeps them fresh.

I use syncthing to sync the sysvol folder between my two samba ad domain controllers.

A folder for backgrounds, shared between gf and i.

We can change each other's currently active background.

Also, synchronization of game assets - i save a template, and it almost immediately becomes available in her game.