Put some Things into your Dropbox!
Thanks to Andi, who donated me a fresh Things for Mac license for my birthday, I can now (as probably many Mac users out there) manage my ToDos within that great App. Unfortunately, Things for Mac doesn’t provide any possibility to Sync the Mac clients with each other – the only thing you can do is Sync it with the iPhone version via WLAN on your iPhone or iPod Touch. It doesn’t even work to sync the Things for Mac on your iMac with the iPhone and then sync the iPhone with your Things for Mac on your MacBook – as many of you would also probably want to do.
Well, what else can we do then? Oh wait, haven’t we just set-up our Dropbox account recently? So why not use it for poor-man’s-sync? 
First of all, move the subfolder of ~/Library/Application Support/Cultured Code/ named “Things” into your Dropbox folder and let it sync up to the cloud. After that, start Things for Mac while pressing the Option (Alt) key and select “Choose Library…” – and choose the Things directory from within your Dropbox-folder.
Then, install Dropbox on your other Mac and again navigate to the Cultured Code directory named above. Now, you just delete the Things subfolder and yet again you start Things while keeping the Option key pressed – and select “Choose Library…“. Then, you select the Things directory from within your Dropbox-folder and you’re done!
CAUTION: This solution allows you the synchronization of Things between two (or more) Macs, but not the simultaneous running! Your Things database might break if you try to run it on both Macs at the same time!
This is a pretty good solution until Cultured Code implements something better.
Thanks for the article… I’ve been using OmniFocus which is just too complicated. I LOVE Things, but one GLARING omission which OmniFocus is GREAT at is being able to keep all versions of the program on multiple macs and your iPhone in sync.. This provides an acceptable solution until Cultured Code gets with the program.
Hi John,
thank you for the comment. Personally, I don’t like the Omni-Suite pretty much, since for me it’s just to “bloated”. Also, in my opinion, it doesn’t really integrate that good into the Mac’s look-and-feel.
But besides of those, it’s surely a great set of applications for the everyday work.
Bye.
Just wanted to say that this is a great solution to a common problem – now if only there was a way of linking it all up to Things on the iPhone as well then I’d be all set!
Hi Ben,
yepp, I also thought of that, since there actually is a way to sync the iPhone Things to the Mac Client, but unfortunately it’s unencrypted and only allows to do that over WiFi connections. A sync via EDGE/UMTS through Dropbox would be very cool. Or even better: A native sync possibility through MobileMe.
Bye.
So, what happens if you do open up sync on two computers by mistake? I now have one computer with the wrong data, but cant figure out how to fix it. I am even more upset that I encountered it before, and fixed it, but cant find my notes or the original links that explained what to do.
Can anyone here help?
Thanks
Hi Mr. T,
opening up Things on two computer should cause the effect, that both apps keep their loaded database within their own memory and as soon as something is being changed, they will try to write it out to the Database.xml. I’m not sure how Dropbox handles “simultaneous” writes from two sources, but I would guess it uses the “last come, first get”-method. The Application that writes data last to Dropbox should be the one winning the race-condition.
However, since Dropbox manages the files on the client’s side (and not on the server’s) it’s pretty hard to have “semaphores” working (e.g. putting a lock on a file while another client just updates it). Besides, it would decrease Dropbox’s performance.
If you need to use two Things simultaneously, you first of all need to make sure that you’re using two different licenses anyway, as far as I know.
As a possible solution: Try to close both instances of Things and check the actual content of your Database.xml file. If it’s not what you’ve expected or if it’s maybe even corrupted, try to revert it via Dropbox to an older version.
Best regards,
Marius.