Alternative to rclone for mac os with GUI?

Hi everyone hope you’re doing well and staying safe, as many of you may know I’m totally blind. I’ve recently got a 2023 m2 MacBook Pro. I tried to use clone before but I don’t like using the CLI. What alternative is there for Mac OS with a GUI that will allow me to backup files and folders to buckets and download them if needs be? Thanks very much for your kind help everyone kind regards.

Do you want to backup to storj, sync to storj, or mount the storj bucket locally?

For backup I recommend Arq7. It can use storj via S3, and is hands down best cloud backup tools on macOS, and I’ve tried a lot of them over the years.

For sync between local folder and the bucket, and browsing the bucket in the app’s interface (I.e. without mounting) you can use Cyberduck (Free) or Panic Transmit (paid, but worth every penny).

If you want to mount the storj bucket (like rclone mount) you want the tool that either supports new FileProvider API on macOS or a tool that serves data via locally run file server.

An example of the former would be StrongSync by ExpanDrive. It is, however, pretty rough in terms of UI polish and stability. The downsize would be lack of streaming support — the file needs to be downloaded in its entirety before it can be open by applications, this kills some scenarios like media file streaming.

An example of the latter will be MountainDuck — it launches local NFS server and serves data via virtual NFS shares. This allows to use native mounting tools on macOS and thus avoid kernel extensions: rclone, for example, relies on FUSE kext to implement filesystem, but going forward kernel extensions are discouraged on most OSes that take security and stability seriously.

My personal choice is Panic’s Transmit, if you need to use it frequently. If not — CyberDuck shall do.

Links for convenience:

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Hi, thanks very much for this. Even though I don’t like rclone one good feature of it is that it can copy several files at once can arq7 also do this? Also can arq7 back up to a specific folder within a bucket? I have used transmission before do you know if you can access? Storj with the forklift FTP client? Thanks for your help. :slight_smile:

Arq does not copy files – it creates versioned backup: an opaque datastore where versioned history of your data is maintained, so that you can restore your data to the state it was in any point in the past. It does not copy files plaintext. But yes, it can use multiple threads.

If you just want to upload files to a bucket as is – then those other tools mentions (CybeDuck and Transmit, and the ForkLift you mentioned – I forgot about it; I used it in the past, it’s also very good) can do it for you. Number of threads is also configurable in each.

ForkLift supports S3, so you can access storj buckets via the Storj-hosted (or self-hosted) S3 gateway.

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Hi, thank you very much for this? :slight_smile: I have some follow-up questions. Firstly, using transmit or forklift can I move files and folders between buckets? Secondly, what do you mean by number of threads? Thirdly, why do you prefer transmit to forklift? Thank you very much for your kind help :slight_smile:

This is a good question. You can, of course, open one bucket in one pane, and the other bucket in the other, and copy by dragging or copy paste. This will always work.

However, whether Transmit will do server-side copy, or download file from one bucket to the local machine and then upload to the other bucket will depend on whether the server (S3 gateway in this case) supports required API (CopyObject in this case). I don’t know if it does. It’s worth trying though.

I don’t know if Forklift supports server-side copy; I haven’t used it in years.

I prefer Transmit because it is much more polished and has a few interesting features, like deeply configurable sync, droplets, etc.;but ultimately it’s a matter of preference. I find Transnit simpler, cleaner, and easier to use; it’s less cluttered. Both are good tools though: If you already have a license for forklift and it works for you I would stick to it.

hi thanks for your help so far.got a cupple more questions. in transmit5 i tried to move files from one bucket to another but all the options for moving cutting coppieing and pasting are grayed out, do you know why this could be and how to resolve this? Also, how do I adjust the amount of threads I can process at once in Transmit? Thanks very much for your help. :slight_smile:

I’m not sure why does it show grayed out for you. I’ve just tried connecting to storj bucket, right-clicking on a file, and I see all options available.

In the Settings, on the Transfers tab, you can find the “Transfer up to N files simultaneously” in the middle of the window. The default is 5 (unless I changed it my settings long ago and forgot)

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Hi, thanks for your continuing kind help. I was unable to find any move options so I’m just going to copy the files between buckets and then delete the files from the first bucket. The copy process is ongoing, but I have received a message saying the server would like you to reduce your requests. What does this mean and what’s the best course of action to take in this situation please? Thank you for all your help once again :slight_smile:

No problem, glad to help.

Maybe it does not like a lot of concurrent transfers? You can try reducing the simultaneous transfers parameter

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