rclone 1.75.0

rclone is rsync for cloud storage. It speaks to more than 70 providers with a single consistent interface, which makes it the tool that turns “my data is scattered across four services” into a solvable problem.

What it connects to

S3 and every S3-compatible service, Backblaze B2, Google Drive, Dropbox, OneDrive, Nextcloud, SFTP, WebDAV, and a long tail of others. Because they all present the same interface, copying between two different providers is one command.

# Interactive setup for a new remote
rclone config

# Copy to a remote
rclone copy /home/user/documents remote:backup/documents

# Sync, making the destination match the source
rclone sync /home/user/documents remote:backup/documents

# Between two different providers directly
rclone copy gdrive:photos b2:photo-archive

sync deletes files at the destination that are not in the source. Always dry-run first:

rclone sync --dry-run /source remote:dest

Mounting

rclone can present a remote as a local filesystem through FUSE.

rclone mount remote:bucket /mnt/remote --vfs-cache-mode writes

This is genuinely useful and genuinely has limits. Cloud storage is not a filesystem, and applications that expect low-latency random access will behave badly. The --vfs-cache-mode settings trade memory and disk for compatibility, and writes is the sensible default for most uses.

Encryption

The crypt backend wraps another remote, encrypting file contents and optionally filenames before upload.

# Configure a crypt remote pointing at an existing one, then use it normally
rclone copy /private secret:

This is how you use a storage provider you do not trust. The provider sees encrypted blobs; you keep the keys.

rclone or restic or Borg

Different jobs, frequently confused.

• rclone synchronizes files as files. The remote copy is browsable and usable directly.
• restic and Borg create deduplicated snapshot repositories with history.

If you want a mirror of your files in the cloud, use rclone. If you want versioned backups with retention policies, use a backup program. Using rclone alone as a backup means a deletion or corruption syncs straight to your copy.

A common and sensible pattern is restic to a local repository, then rclone to push that repository offsite.

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