How to: Sync your files on Mac

If you’re lucky enough to have a MobileMe account, you can keep all your files, whether they’re on your mobile device or on your Mac, perfectly in sync. We’re not all ready to pay up $99 a year though, especially considering the hiccups MobileMe went through recently.

So what are the best ways to easily sync files on your Mac? Unfortunately Apple has never truly released an application to help you keep files up to date easily and quickly. We’ll have to turn our eyes to third party developers then. I’ve found three programs that allow you to easily sync files and make sure you are looking at the most recent piece of information anytime on your Mac.

First up is Picnic. The application is fitted with an attractive rounded interface and simple settings. Using Bonjour, the program ensures that files on one or more Macs are kept in sync. You can subscribe to users on your network, so that Picnic automatically takes care of syncing files that have been modified.

Other more experienced users will probably want to turn to the versatile Cyberduck client. An extremely powerful and intuitive application, Cyberduck allows you to  browse FTP, SFTP, WEBDAV and Amazon S3 servers. Find the file to sync with, open the File menu and select ‘Synchronize’. Then select the file to sync and let Cyberduck do the hard work. You don’t even need any advanced knowledge of Cyberduck.

Third up is ChronoSync. Specifically built for file and folder synchronizations and backups, it’s probably the most effective application of the three. Just select the file or group of files to sync, choose a destination and decide on a specific action. ChronoSync works very well with large batches of files, will analyze files for specific changes and provides detailed logs and data verification.