Sync between devices

[AlexDumi29]

Checklist

• I checked, but didn't find any duplicates (open OR closed) of this issue in the repo.
• I have read the contribution guidelines given at https://github.com/TeamNewPipe/NewPipe/blob/HEAD/.github/CONTRIBUTING.md.
• This issue contains only one feature request. I will open one issue for every feature I want to request.

Describe the feature you want

Sync playlists and subscriptions between devices.

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe it

I have two phones and a tablet and I have to add new subscriptions and videos manually. Import export exists but it' kind of tedious and from what I've observed a while ago not too reliable.

Additional context

How will you/everyone benefit from this feature?

I believe the community would benefit tremendously because of the ease of use this feature brings. Many more people would use Newpipe thanks to the simplicity of having all of your playlist and subscriptions in one place, plus people won't lose all of their subscriptions and playlists due to a bad export.

[Timmy183-ui]

Will defeat the whole purpose of privacy until it is aes256 encrypted or something

[ovz93br43v7]

Probably this can be done with https://github.com/syncthing/syncthing ? Then the sync is safe regarding any privacy risks.

[Zakkumaru]

I, too, was going to recommend Syncthing. However, with the emergence of EteBase ( https://github.com/etesync ), I think it would be possible to create a clean, clutter-free database that all your devices could use to sync NewPipe. I would very much like to see this become a thing.

If nothing else, a DecSync ( https://github.com/39aldo39/DecSync ) like method with Syncthing would be great.

[eternaltyro]

I want to add my support to what @Zakkumaru said about implementing sync with etesync. It's the way to go in my opinion.

[QJKX]

#1163 is about (server based) sync

[tdehaeze]

Would love to be able to use Syncthing.
Is this currently not possible because the NewPipe data/configuration are not accessible in the phone directory (without root)?

Thanks

[cloo]

As freetube, the yt desktop client has no sync system yet too, but mention future plans to implement it, how cool it would be for NewPipe to collaborate on a common system! So we could sync not only across devices but across platforms!

[Delikt]

+1 for a simple Time based (daily, hourly etc ) Option to Import and Export database automatically in the background and use Syncthing to sync all my devices from a given Path on the storage.

[sentriz]

@Delikt I started using seedvault to backup my phone. It periodically writes app backups, including NewPipe and databases to a local folder - which Syncthing then syncs elsewhere.

Has been working well so far

[Garbulix]

Maybe some kind of integration with cloud storages, eg. Nextcloud? The database would be storied and updated there and NewPipe would check if there are changes.

[Atemu]

Syncing state like this is not trivial and needs a custom implementation that is tailored for this purpose. Pretty much a dup of #1163 because if you can do cloud sync with multiple devices, you can do P2P sync or anything of that nature; it requires the same code.

RE general purpose syncers: These will not work because state changes need to be merged more precisely than on a file-level.

Example: You subscribed to channel foo on device A and to channel bar on device B while both couldn't talk to each other.

A file sync would mean choosing the state of the subscriptions list of either A or B (probably the older one): You'd lose one of the additions due to sync.
A custom syncer could merge these additions together because it'd know the semantics of the operations that were executed on each device. It'd arrive at a state of the subscriptions list which contains both foo and bar.