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    Local-first software (2019)

    (www.inkandswitch.com)
    863 points gasull | 15 comments | 05 Jul 25 14:45 UTC | HN request time: 0.941s | source | bottom
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    DataDaoDe ◴[05 Jul 25 17:02 UTC] No.44474024[source]▶
    Yes a thousand percent! I'm working on this too. I'm sick of everyone trying to come up with a use case to get all my data in everyone's cloud so I have to pay a subscription fee to just make things work. I'm working on a fitness tracking app right now that will use the sublime model - just buy it, get updates for X years, sync with all your devices and use it forever. If you want updates after X years buy the newest version again. If its good enough as is - and that's the goal - just keep using it forever.

    This is the model I want from 90% of the software out there, just give me a reasonable price to buy it, make the product good, and don't marry it to the cloud so much that its unusable w/out it.

    There are also a lot of added benefits to this model in general beyond the data privacy (most are mentioned in the article), but not all the problems are solved here. This is a big space that still needs a lot of tooling to make things really easy going but the tech to do it is there.

    Finally, the best part (IMHO) about local-first software is it brings back a much healthier incentive structure - you're not monetizing via ads or tracking users or maxing "engagement" - you're just building a product and getting paid for how good it is. To me it feels like its software that actually serves the user.

    replies(11): >>44474277 #>>44474897 #>>44475069 #>>44475094 #>>44475231 #>>44475944 #>>44477443 #>>44477944 #>>44478379 #>>44481416 #>>44483452 #
    1. maxhille ◴[05 Jul 25 19:52 UTC] No.44475069[source]▶
    How do you plan to do the syncing without some sort of cloud infrastructure?
    replies(11): >>44475181 #>>44475183 #>>44475751 #>>44475893 #>>44476204 #>>44476424 #>>44476732 #>>44476818 #>>44477202 #>>44477595 #>>44479040 #
    2. piperswe ◴[05 Jul 25 20:10 UTC] No.44475181[source]▶
    Something like Syncthing, perhaps?
    replies(1): >>44476034 #
    3. DataDaoDe ◴[05 Jul 25 20:11 UTC] No.44475183[source]▶
    right now its in webrtc
    4. CGamesPlay ◴[05 Jul 25 21:56 UTC] No.44475893[source]▶
    There are a lot of valid answers to this! One is to use your platform's provided one, like OneDrive or iCloud. Another is to integrate with some other sync platform. Dropbox is a popular target for this. Peer-to-peer is another, although that obviously also come with limitations. Finally, bring-your-own-sync is a popular choice amongst open-source apps, where you provide a self-hostable sync server.
    replies(1): >>44480575 #
    5. dsp_person ◴[05 Jul 25 22:16 UTC] No.44476034[source]▶
    Anyone know of any mobile apps that have done this and bundled their own fork of syncthing under the hood for syncing?
    replies(1): >>44477400 #
    6. rschiavone ◴[05 Jul 25 22:51 UTC] No.44476204[source]▶
    There's a git plugin.
    7. WD-42 ◴[05 Jul 25 23:39 UTC] No.44476424[source]▶
    Check out Aardvark (renamed to reflection) it's a collaborative note-taking app from the GNOME folks. I think the idea isn't to completely remove cloud infrastructure, but to at least make it optional and/or provide alternatives. For example, this note app works via P2P. blogs.gnome.org/tbernard/2025/06/30/aardvark-summer-2025-update/
    8. MajesticHobo2 ◴[06 Jul 25 00:35 UTC] No.44476732[source]▶
    You can use FTP and SVN.
    replies(1): >>44477736 #
    9. j45 ◴[06 Jul 25 00:52 UTC] No.44476818[source]▶
    Syncthing
    10. jmb99 ◴[06 Jul 25 02:07 UTC] No.44477202[source]▶
    The benefit of local-first means you’re not incentivized to sell your cloud offering, so you can just give options. Sync with iCloud, Google drive, OneDrive, Dropbox, Mega, SMB, SFTP, FTP, whatever you feel like adding support for. And since local-first usually means having some kind of sane file format, you can let “advanced” users manage their own files and synchronization like people have been doing for the last 50 years.
    11. FallCheeta7373 ◴[06 Jul 25 02:43 UTC] No.44477400{3}[source]▶
    Practically not really needed for a person going out of their way to setup syncthing, you can just sync the underlying folder, I do this with logseq, their syncing subscription is paid, I just sync the underlying logseq graph and markdown syntax. It's seamless and rarely disturbs me, works well in background, although android seemingly doesn't respect my background preferences, and clears it out of my ram when I inevitably hit the clear button, but that's soluble by simply rebooting once in a while.
    12. pvh ◴[06 Jul 25 03:29 UTC] No.44477595[source]▶
    Ideally, you would use existing commodity infrastructure but we have found none of it is really super fit for our purposes. Failing that, we have been developing an approach to low-maintenance reusable infrastructure. For now, I would advise running your own but positioning yourself to take advantage of commodity systems as they emerge.
    13. cortesoft ◴[06 Jul 25 04:05 UTC] No.44477736[source]▶
    Both of those require a server
    14. Hard_Space ◴[06 Jul 25 09:06 UTC] No.44479040[source]▶
    For Joplin I use WebDav from the 10gb of free file storage that comes with Fastmail. So I have easy sync with multiple platforms and form factors, and even substantial notes make little dent in the allowance.
    15. jen20 ◴[06 Jul 25 13:18 UTC] No.44480575[source]▶
    Note that this thread is full of people claiming that using SQLite with iCloud sync is evidence of some conspiracy theory or other!