Skip to content
treeline

Run Watch as a Service

tl hub watch pushes local changes to your Hub and pulls remote ones as they happen. In a terminal it runs until you close it — this page makes it survive reboots and closed terminals by running it as a background service.

If you use the desktop app on this machine, you don’t need this. The app syncs on its own while it’s open. A watch service is for CLI-only devices: a headless box, a server, or a machine where you only use tl.

The examples assume the default install location, ~/.treeline/bin/tl, and a device that’s already linked. Watch checks the Hub every 15 seconds and debounces local writes for 5 (--poll and --debounce to change).

macOS (launchd)

Section titled “macOS (launchd)”

Save this as ~/Library/LaunchAgents/money.treeline.hub-watch.plist, replacing /Users/you with your home directory — launchd doesn’t expand ~:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
  <key>Label</key>
  <string>money.treeline.hub-watch</string>
  <key>ProgramArguments</key>
  <array>
    <string>/Users/you/.treeline/bin/tl</string>
    <string>hub</string>
    <string>watch</string>
  </array>
  <key>RunAtLoad</key>
  <true/>
  <key>KeepAlive</key>
  <true/>
  <key>StandardOutPath</key>
  <string>/Users/you/.treeline/hub-watch.log</string>
  <key>StandardErrorPath</key>
  <string>/Users/you/.treeline/hub-watch.log</string>
</dict>
</plist>

Then load it:

Terminal window
launchctl load ~/Library/LaunchAgents/money.treeline.hub-watch.plist

It starts now and on every login. To stop it: launchctl unload the same path. Activity lands in ~/.treeline/hub-watch.log.

Linux (systemd user unit)

Section titled “Linux (systemd user unit)”

Save this as ~/.config/systemd/user/treeline-hub-watch.service:

[Unit]
Description=Treeline hub watch
After=network-online.target


[Service]
ExecStart=%h/.treeline/bin/tl hub watch
Restart=on-failure


[Install]
WantedBy=default.target

Enable and start it:

Terminal window
systemctl --user daemon-reload
systemctl --user enable --now treeline-hub-watch

On a headless machine, user services normally stop when you log out — tell systemd to keep yours running:

Terminal window
loginctl enable-linger $USER

Logs: journalctl --user -u treeline-hub-watch -f.

Windows (Task Scheduler)

Section titled “Windows (Task Scheduler)”

Create a task that starts watch at logon:

Terminal window
schtasks /Create /TN "Treeline Hub Watch" /SC ONLOGON `
  /TR "%USERPROFILE%\.treeline\bin\tl.exe hub watch"

This runs it in a console window. To hide it, open Task Scheduler, find the task, and set Run whether user is logged on or not — or leave it visible if you like seeing the sync activity.

Checking on it

Section titled “Checking on it”

From any linked device, tl hub status shows the connection, and the Hub-side push timestamps tell you whether this device has been syncing. If a conflict pauses syncing, watch keeps running and reports it on each attempt — resolve with tl hub conflicts / tl hub resolve and it picks back up.