OpenSave vs SideSave

OpenSave syncs game saves among a user's devices, including emulator saves and games outside Steam Cloud. It can identify games using an offline, community-maintained index of more than 20,000 titles, or track a folder or file selected by the user. Devices can find each other over the same Wi-Fi or pair over the internet with a room code, without an account or port forwarding. OpenSave keeps versioned snapshots and supports rollback and branches; when it finds conflicting saves, it asks the user how to resolve them. Optional snapshot backups can go to Google Drive, Dropbox, OneDrive, WebDAV, or a NAS folder. On a LAN, devices communicate directly. Internet syncing uses an encrypted connection to a stateless relay, but the encryption ends there and the relay could read forwarded data. Users can self-host the relay and manage its daemon and CLI through a local REST/WebSocket API. It is free and MIT-licensed, with Windows, Linux, Steam Deck, and macOS options. On a stock Steam Deck, the Linux tarball will not start; the site recommends the Flatpak.

SideSave is free, open-source software that synchronizes save data for non-Steam games added to Steam as shortcuts. It pairs two approved machines and transfers tracked saves over a local network or an internet relay, sending only changed content blocks. Versioned snapshots and branches preserve history, while lineage-based conflict detection asks whether to keep the local copy, remote copy, or both. Saves can be restored individually or as complete versions. Detection reads Steam’s shortcuts.vdf file and offers Proton save locations for tracking. The scan excludes real Steam Cloud games, emulator saves, repack-wrapper detection, and portable installs. Optional backups can mirror snapshots to Google Drive, Dropbox, OneDrive, WebDAV, a webhook, or local/NAS storage. SideSave has no accounts or telemetry; relay traffic is encrypted but not end-to-end. The project publishes no releases, so users build the CLI, desktop app, relay, or Steam Deck components from source.