Community member Garret Miller reached out to us on the Pro Tools podcast a few months ago asking about syncing Pro Tools presets and other relevant files between two systems so he always had the same Pro Tools presets etc available on both systems.

Garret took our suggestions and built on them and fully implemented a system that is not only simple but automatic once it’s set up and he wanted to share it with the community.

The 3 products he uses are….

1. Dropbox - to do the automatic syncing behind the scenes;
2. Mac Drop Any-allows you to put ANY folder into Dropbox to sync on the Master computer (regardless of its location on your computer)
3. ChronoSync - syncs files from Dropbox to other locations on slave computer.

All in all this costs $40 USD and now saves him headaches and time and he always has that latest preset he made on the road or in studio! This is this system….

1. Install Dropbox on both computer and make a folder called “Studio Sync” or something similar. 
2. Install Mac Drop Any on master computer 
3. Install ChronoSync on slave computer 
4. On Master computer go to a folder you want to sync eg. “Universal Audio Sessions” in “My Documents” to sync session files for a UA Apollo. Right click this folder and select “Sync Via MacDropAny” 
5. It opens MacDropAny and you select you want to sync via DropBox. 
6. Then you choose where in Dropbox to put it. Put it in the “Studio Sync” folder you’ve made 
7. Voila, now it’s going to show up on your slave computer. You’re halfway done. 
8. Now on slave computer you need to open ChronoSync and set up some synchronizations to move these files to the correct places on your slave computer. 
9. In ChronoSync choose “new synchronizer”. 
10. Call It “UA Sessions syncer” 
11. Choose the Left target location - this will be the “UA Sessions” folder that’s in the “studio sync” folder in Dropbox. 
12. Choose the Right target location - this is where that folder needs to live on the slave computer so that the UA Apollo mixer actually sees these presets. So choose “users/documents/Universal Audio/Sessions” 
13. Make sure it’s a bidirectional sync so if you make a new preset on your slave rig it will show up on your master rig. 
14. Repeat this for all the folders/files you want to sync. Eleven Rack presets, Guitar Rig Presets, Pro Tools Presets, plug-in presets, Logic presets or sounds etc. You will think of several. (and then some more) 
15. Once you have all of these individual Synchronizers set up, make a new Container in ChronoSync that will run all of these individual ones automatically on a schedule. 
16. Call it “Global Preset Syncer”  
17. Click “Add” at the top and you will see you individual syncs in the “ChronoSync Documents” Folder it automatically goes to. 
18. Select the first one you want. Hit open and repeat till you have added all of them.
19. Then Click “Add to Schedule” and select when and how often you want it to run. I do mine every day at 9pm. You can do it multiple times a day or once a week. It’s a little work to setup, but moves quickly once you understand the process and have the hang of it. Once it’s setup you never have to worry about it again. 

He recommends that for safety, before the first sync, it might be worth manually copying all of the files on Slave computer from Dropbox folders to their respective home places. That way the bidirectional sync knows that the home location (in my Documents or Library etc) should have files there and it doesn’t interpret it the other way and delete them from your Dropbox! he wasn’t sure what it would do that so he did the safe thing and manually copied them before he ran any syncs.

We haven’t tested this so if you would like to try it, make sure everything is backed up on your Pro Tools installation and on your computer in case it goes wrong and let us know how you get on with it.