Feature description

Hello Syncthing team,

I’d like to propose a feature that could make multi-device management easier, especially for users who maintain multiple devices with common settings.

Problem or use case

🛑 Current Challenge
Currently, Syncthing settings — such as:

• Ignore patterns
• Folder versioning strategies
• Custom folder defaults
• Folder-specific advanced settings

…must be configured individually on each device.

While folder syncing works beautifully, maintaining consistent meta-configuration (i.e., the rules about how folders behave) across devices can be:

• Tedious
• Error-prone
• Hard for non-technical users to keep aligned

✅ Proposed Improvement

• Introduce a Syncthing Shareable Config Folder — a predefined, optional sync folder that:
• Contains user-configurable files holding shareable settings (e.g., .stignore, .stversioning templates, folder-level defaults).
• Syncs across linked devices just like any other folder.
• Allows Syncthing on each device to automatically apply or suggest these shared settings when creating or updating folders.

🎯 Benefits

• Makes it easier for users to “do the right thing” across devices.
• Reduces configuration drift when adding new devices to an existing Syncthing network.
• Provides a natural, file-based mechanism that fits Syncthing’s P2P, decentralized philosophy (no cloud server or central configuration).
• Supports advanced workflows (e.g., shared ignore templates, consistent versioning policies).

⚙ Possible Implementation Ideas

• Add a special folder type or label (e.g., Shareable Config) that Syncthing recognizes internally.
• Provide UI options to import settings from the shared config folder into individual folder configurations.
• Ensure sensitive device- or system-specific settings are excluded or opt-in only.

📦 Example Use Case
A user has three devices:

• Laptop
• Desktop
• NAS

They want all devices to:

• Use the same ignore patterns across certain folders.
• Apply the same file versioning policy.
• Share sync folder defaults (e.g., enabling/disabling folder master mode).

Instead of manually configuring each device, the shared config folder distributes and applies these rules automatically.

Thank you for your incredible work on Syncthing — it’s an invaluable tool!

Alternatives or workarounds

Currently the user has to make sure that a lot of configuration information that is desirable to stay identical across devices is configured correctly manually.