It works well for smaller folders but it slows down to a crawl with folders that contain thousands of files. If I add a file to an empty shared folder it will sync almost instantly but if I take a photo both sides become aware of the change rather quickly but then they just sit around for 5 minutes doing nothing before starting the transfer.

how many thousands? I have a folder with a total of 12760 files spread within several folders, but the largest I think is the one with 3827 files.

I've noticed the sync isn't instantaneous, but if I ping one device from the other, it starts immediately. I think Android has some kind of network related sleep somewhere, since the two nixos ones just sync immediately.

I have around 4000 photos and videos in this folder. I don't know what it is but I know that it's not a network issue.

I think it takes a long time because the phone CPU is much slower than the desktop but I couldn't tell you what it's doing, the status doesn't say anything useful except noting that files are out of sync and that the other device is connected.

yes I do wish it would say a bit more of what's going on and have a big button that says "try it now".