Rclone Browser

Rclone Browser [5] offers a convenient graphical user interface for Rclone. You can download this application from the project's GitHub page as an app image for 32- and 64-bit PCs and the Raspberry Pi. Once execute rights have been granted,

chmod +x <image>

the images can be used independent of the package manager on any Linux distribution without the need to install.

Calling the program opens a standard program window with a menubar, a tab bar, and a buttonbar. Start by going to the Remotes tab and press the Refresh button below to the left to display the cloud services configured in Rclone. Selecting a service opens it and displays the content in a tree view in the new tab created for the service (Figure 7).

Figure 7: Rclone Browser makes using the software child's play.

You can navigate freely in the tree view. To edit content, click on the desired directory or file, which enables the function buttons for the file or directory in the toolbar above the tree view. You can use them to upload, download, rename, and delete files. Dialog boxes let you tweak the settings for uploading or downloading.

Regardless of the content currently selected, you can create new folders and rename or move existing ones at any time. The application can also display the folder size and the number of files it contains. You can view existing control actions such as cron jobs in the Jobs and Tasks tabs, provided you used Rclone to define them.

Instead of the toolbar, you can use the context menus with a right-click on a file or directory in the tree view to work with your cloud content.

Customization

Pressing File | Preferences brings up the Preferences dialog (Figure 8). Under the General tab, you can specify the Browser start parameters that Rclone uses when opening connections to the cloud services. You can also predefine upload and download folders here.

Figure 8: The Preferences dialog has parameters and flags you use to customize your Rclone Browser settings.

In the Interface tab, you can specify various options for the appearance and behavior of the application. The Proxy tab offers a range of configuration options for a proxy server. The settings made here affect all activated cloud connections.

Conclusions

Rclone is the perfect counterpart for admins who use the Rsync tool on local networks by helping them integrate cloud services into their data backup strategy. With its various operating modes, it not only supports typical deployment options, but also lets you use multiple cloud services simultaneously without having to install native clients up front. Various graphical front ends add more convenience for the tasks at hand. Cloud storage can be seamlessly mounted on the local system as a network drive, but given the diverse feature set, make sure you plan time to familiarize yourself with the software. If you want to use Rclone at work, go the extra mile and customize the application to precisely meet your needs.