Sharing a Local Sync Folder on OS X

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In this article we discuss how to sync STRIP with a shared folder on your Mac from two different user accounts on your Mac.

With the release of SFM 2.5.0 we improved the handling of the fourth and little-known sync service available in STRIP (only in Windows and OS X) that we call Local Folder Sync. Basically, instead of connecting to a sync client over the network you point STRIP at a folder on your system and tell it, “sync there,” the idea being you could access this folder from other accounts on your system, or perhaps via a network share. There are lots of esoteric reasons you might do this, so we’ll just stick to the simple use case we’ve outlined above.

On your Mac, sign in to—let’s call it your primary—user account and do the following:

  1. Launch STRIP and sign in
  2. Go to STRIP menu in the menu bar and select Preferences
  3. Click on the Sync tab
  4. Click the buttons for Enable Sync and Local Folder Sync
  5. Click on the Choose button that appears and select the /Users/Shared folder
  6. Close the Preferences window
  7. Click on the Sync button in the toolbar of the main window in STRIP

Sync should complete successfully. Your Preferences for Sync should look like this:

e1bce096d206b42c.png784×343 49.9 KB

But Wait, There’s More

We’re not quite ready to set up sync from your secondary user account, we have to do something down and dirty in the Terminal first:

  1. Launch Terminal from your primary user account
  2. Enter: chmod -R ugo+w /Users/Shared/Zetetic

A word: That command gives every user account on your Mac access to the sync folder that STRIP created in /Users/Shared during the first sync with the /Users/Shared folder. In order for your secondary account to access this folder you have to tweak the permissions to make is so with chmod. If you’d like to ensure only your primary and secondary user accounts have access to this folder you’ll need to learn how to work with Unix user and group file permissions, a little beyond the scope of this article.

Now you’re ready to log in to your secondary user account, configure STRIP to access /Users/Shared and sync:

  1. Launch STRIP and sign in
  2. Go to STRIP menu in the menu bar and select Preferences
  3. Click on the Sync tab
  4. Click the buttons for Enable Sync and Local Folder Sync
  5. Click on the Choose button that appears and select the /Users/Shared folder
  6. Close the Preferences window
  7. Click on the Sync button in the toolbar of the main window in STRIP

That’s it!