A look at BitTorrent Sync's Pro features: Sync All and On-the-fly permissions

BitTorrent Sync is a file synchronization service that uses BitTorrent technology as its foundation. Unlike other file synchronization services, it is not relying on Internet servers to store data.

Note: BitTorrent Sync 2 is currently in active development which means that it is not final. This is just a snapshot describing the current state of development and no representation of the final product.

That's beneficial to privacy but adds the requirement that at least two computers need to be connected to the Internet for the data to be synced (one with the files and the other who requested them).

When BitTorrent Sync launched it was a rather bare bones application that you could use to sync files and set basic permissions but that was about it.

The developers have been hard at work and announced that they are working on BitTorrent Sync 2.0 that improves the software on many levels.

During that announcement, they mentioned the plan to release a BitTorrent Sync 2.0 Pro version that would offer features that the free version would not.

Today, the first two pro features landed in public alpha builds of BitTorrent Sync 2.0.

Sync All

Up until now, you had the option to sync all files of a selected folder or no files at all. While that works most of the time, it could result in storage issues on target devices since there are not any size limitations when it comes to the sharing of files and folders.

If you are running a 64 Gigabyte Surface Pro 3 device you probably don't want to sync a 20 Gigabyte development folder to the device, especially if you only need some files or a single project folder and not all of it.

Sync All adds that feature to the software. Instead of syncing all files and folders, you switch it to off so that none are downloaded to the device at first.

Placeholder images are displayed instead on the system which you can click on in Windows Explorer to sync them to the device.

Move the mouse cursor over the shared item and click on the three dots that appear to change the Sync all state of that item on the device.

When you do, you get the option to keep all files that have been synced already or delete them all.

New folders that are shared display a sync all setting directly so that you can make the selection before any data is transferred.

On-the-fly Permissions

BitTorrent Sync supports three different permissions of which you can set two for each folder you share (the third is owner which is automatically given if you add a folder to the software that you want to sync).

You can set a share to read only which allows others to read files but not modify them, or to read & write which allows them to do both.

On-the-fly permissions allow you to change permissions for individual peers connected to your device. You can leave permissions at read only for most but change permissions for those who need write access to read&write for example.

There is an option to set the owner privilege as well.

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