Got it. Out of curiosity, how exactly is this syncing occuring? As in, say you edit a file in GoodReader on the iPad, what process initiates the transfer to the Mac and what service/app needs to be running on the Mac?
You're right, many ways/workflows to do things and whats best for one differs from everyone else.
In the GoodReader app you can set up various "sync services", in particular you can set up your mac as a sync server. This means running standard Apple filesharing on your mac (right now GoodReader uses AFP, but I expect at some point that will change to SMB), and telling GoodReader the IP address, the login credentials, and the PDF folder of interest (ie the usual sort of stuff you need to connect to any server).
Once that has been done, one time, then in the "toolbar" of various actions (appears in various places in the GoodReader app, there is a sync button you can press and the sync happens). Since it's using standard Apple file sharing it operates when file sharing operates. If the target mac is asleep or disconnected from the network of course you can't connect! Likewise (unless you have done something unusual with your file sharing, like port forwarding) filesharing won't work if you are out of your house and not on the local network.
"Syncing" can be set to do various things in terms of what gets added or deleted on what side; but I do a "total" sync, meaning that both sides are made to match each other exactly, with deletions or additions happening on both sides.
My usual work flow is I collect PDFs on my mac during the course of a week or two, I file them appropriately on the mac. At the same time I am reading older PDFs on my iPad and (usually) deleting them after I have read them, (sometimes) moving them to permanent storage.
When I hit the sync button
- the new PDFs on the mac move to the iPad
- the PDFs that were on the iPad get deleted from the Mac
- the PDFs that were moved to a permanent folder on the iPad similarly get moved to that folder on the Mac.
Sync is very fast (of course it could be slow if you have really slow WiFi, or have added a huge number of large PDFs) but for me it's usually a few seconds to tens of seconds.
For me the advantages of doing things this way include:
- My PDF library is large (tens of GB) so I'm not using up, or even overflowing, my 50GB paid-for cloud storage.
- *I* control the times at which sync happens.
If I delete something on the iPad by mistake, I know it's still available on my Mac until I force a GoodReader sync.
Likewise when I force a sync I KNOW that the data (not just a reference to it) is sitting on my iPad. I never get that situation you sometimes get with iCloud Drive where you go into a plane or whatever and find that a file you hoped to access has not been downloaded to your iPad...
And I know that if I go on vacation for three weeks, I can read everything on my iPad without worry (even if I never have internet access), I can delete files, move them around, annotate them, and when I get back and hit the sync button everything will magically change on my mac to match what I did on vacation.
