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TUAW Tips: Sync The Hit List on multiple machines with DropBox


One of the great torments of owning several computers is keeping all of your personal data in sync; having multiple copies of the same application speak the same jive. Take The Hit List, for example. I use this app on my MacBook Pro at work for organizing tasks and collecting thoughts like a virtual inbox to my brain. At the end of the day I need a way to get all the day's notes from my laptop into my home desktop, which also happens to be running THL as well. What to do?

The ideal solution is to get each machine sharing the same THL database file synced to the cloud, instead of a locally rooted file. Fortunately, there is an way to do just this, and all that is required is for each machine to be running Dropbox. By now all of you should be using this amazingly awesome free service for saving and sharing data to the cloud. If you haven't yet opened an account, and downloaded and installed the Mac desktop client, go now. It's ok, I'll wait. Got it? Good, now let's do this.

First, you need to locate THL's main database file which can be found hiding in /Users/userprofile/Library/Application Support/The Hit List. Look for a file called The Hit List Library.thllibrary. Find it? Good, now simply drag this file to your Dropbox folder. Hold on, we're not quite done yet. Here's where the magic happens.

Hold down the option key while launching The Hit List. A dialog window will appear, asking what the hell you've just done with its library. Just select "Choose Library" and point it the file located in your Dropbox folder. You must repeat this part of the process on every machine running THL. That's it!

There is one small caveat. It's a good idea to always ensure that Dropbox has fully synced all of your local changes before loading THL on another machine, or else you risk losing your most recent data. Be wise to this and you'll have no troubles at all. You're welcome.

By the way, if you use Things rather than The Hit List for your task management, be sure to see our previous post about how to sync it using Dropbox as well.

One of the great torments of owning several computers is keeping all of your personal data in sync; having multiple copies of the same...
 

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Stealth43

Ya'll are doing it wrong. Have a local copy of your lib on each box, stored in the normal place, and allow fruux to handle the calendar/note syncing.

October 26 2009 at 2:40 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Jaden10

Get yourself (and me) 256mb extra space when you use this link:
https://www.getdropbox.com/referrals/NTIxODQ5NjA5
Thanks!

October 19 2009 at 7:21 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
1 reply to Jaden10's comment
tknice

My account still has a few referrals left for the extra 250 bonus:

https://www.getdropbox.com/referrals/NTI0MTY5ODc5

October 20 2009 at 11:06 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Josh

get an extra 256mb when using this referral code

https://www.getdropbox.com/referrals/NTIxODYxNDU5

October 19 2009 at 6:50 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Jaden10

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=dropbox+site%3Atuaw.com

October 19 2009 at 6:26 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Janichsan

Burns: "I really like the Dropbox."
Smithers: "I gathered, yeah..."

Seriously, guys: I hope Dropbox pays you for all the advertising you do for them. Or why is there a Dropbox related article *every* day?

October 19 2009 at 1:33 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
2 replies to Janichsan's comment
Theo

I was hoping the same. I think that Dropbox is a great service (I am a paying customer myself), however I agree that the sheer number of Dropbox articles are getting out of hand.

October 19 2009 at 2:37 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Jaden10

TUAW must really love DropBox (or get paid a lot by them)!

October 19 2009 at 6:22 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Markus

Sure looks like it would be a cool feature for these kinds of apps to allow for having several databases - one 'main' database that's written into, and any number of others that are read-only - then you could set each computer to have a different main database and be synced without possible data losses.

October 19 2009 at 10:15 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
1 reply to Markus's comment
Markus

...or simply to do it like OmniFocus using WebDav (MobileMe).

October 19 2009 at 10:52 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Kent Pribbernow

1. I would think that was obvious to anyone, hence my use of the generic term "userprofile" - which represents a variable. I might just as well have said "insertyournamehere".

2. Why would you save an older library which didn't contain all of your notes to Dropbox?

3. Please provide a link to your own piece, then call me. And your mom is a poorly translated German article, with grammatical errors.

October 19 2009 at 9:44 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
LD

Yeah, who is creating local software in a web-based world that requires manual syncing as a kludge? Use a product that's inherently web-based or has a web backend.

October 19 2009 at 9:27 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
1 reply to LD's comment
Kent Pribbernow

Applications that store their data locally in walled gardens are a dying breed, IMO. Storing libraries in the cloud or tied to some form of web service is becoming standard practice. We shouldn't need to jump through hoops to make our data portable.

October 19 2009 at 9:37 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Dany Geller

www.rememberthemilk.com

You don't have to sync... Is all web based...
There are many Iphone apps, desktop widgets, etc...

October 19 2009 at 8:43 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Anthony

There's currently a Dropbox feature request for specifying sync priorities, until then you might want to make sure you don't have THL/Things launching on boot, it could start before Dropbox is sync'd. I'm no expert but I'd be worried about which version of the file you would end up with after syncing. Thankfully, Dropbox has revisions so you can always roll back to the newer one, but it's something to be mindful of..

October 19 2009 at 8:41 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
4 replies to Anthony's comment
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