11 ms·

Maestral – open-source Dropbox client

175 points by lsferreira42 5y ago

lsferreira42 5y ago
It's not my project, just a very happy user here!
kingcharles 5y ago
Ah. No easy way to get it working on Windows, sadly. And the official Windows Dropbox client is a no-go. I have too many files. It just never starts the sync. It thinks it has downloaded all my files, but they are always zero bytes and I am constantly going into the web UI to check it hasn't erased them all. Back to just download multi-hundred-gig .zips from the web UI to get my data out of Dropbox. IDrive's app is the same. No easy way to get your data back out. The only one that sort of works, but you have to go a folder at a time, is Mega's app. (put.io is nice because you can FTP to your files, but I don't consider them a cloud storage provider of the regular sort) Can't any cloud storage provider make a good app? Is rsync any good?
everythingness 5y ago
you can also run more than one dropbox account on the same machine using maestral
HNHatesUsers 5y ago
pfist 5y ago
I can't use this because I'm on Windows, but it looks cool. I love the idea of more fine-grained sync control with gitignore-style pattern matching. Neat!
Xavdidtheshadow 5y ago
I wanted to use this, but it doesn't handle Smart Sync, a feature I find myself really taking advantage of. But, I'm glad this sort of thing exists!
defensem3ch 5y ago
I've been using this for a while from Linux because my Dropbox folder is on an NTFS drive. It's very nice.
torstenvl 5y ago
I use maestral on macOS and it works great. More lightweight than the official client, and when I do a clean reinstall it's almost automatic via brew.
matthewmacleod 5y ago
Good to see this here! I started using Maestral after finding myself increasingly annoyed by the unfortunately shitty experience of the official client on the Mac (and the lack of a native ARM release at the time). What I really like is that I haven’t ever really noticed it’s there, which is exactly what you want from a bit of software like this. It’s a bit unfortunate that it doesn’t (or more accurately can’t) support smart sync, which is a very nice Dropbox feature. But it’s actually worth the sacrifice.
- m1sta_ 5y ago
  Why couldn't it support smart sync?
eric4smith 5y ago
Good stuff. But smart sync is a deal killer. I have a few hundred gigs of data in Dropbox at this point and smart sync is a big savior. But this would be awesome for Linux.
ocdtrekkie 5y ago
"Unlimited number of devices" would concern me here: Third party clients generally aren't too problematic for service companies... unless they bypass revenue somehow. I can't imagine Dropbox is thrilled this app bypasses a revenue tier.
- oakesm9 5y ago
  The device limit by Dropbox only applies to devices using the official client. This uses the official API, but Dropbox does not impose any limits on the number of apps using that. That’s why this doesn’t count towards your device limit. It’s not a workaround or a bypass, but just a quirk of how Dropbox bills for devices.
itake 5y ago
Just wondering, but how doe these clients exist? Wouldn't DD send a cease and desist or simple modify their API to disable it? Or are the leaning on how ppl don't want to update clients so DropBox actually can't make breaking API changes?
- lelandfe 5y ago
  If this is just using API endpoints I can’t see the justification for a cease & desist Although lack of justification has not impeded nastygrams in the past
- quesera 5y ago
  Why would Dropbox want to shut this down? They publish an API, and they encourage developers to integrate with their API. Dropbox isn't pushing ads at users, so it's not like Twitter or YouTube where unofficial clients are a threat to their business model. Very much the opposite, I think.
  - stingraycharles 5y ago
    There are all kinds of reasons why an org would want to shut down third party clients like these; perhaps they feel like they could be held liable if the clients misbehave / delete all files, or feel like they want more control over the “Dropbox experience”. Remember, Twitter at one time was also pushing people to integrate into their ecosystem, but then decided to kill third party clients. In my case I’m super happy with maestral, as the vanilla Dropbox client doesn’t support my filesystem.
  - kiririn 5y ago
    The official client has a limit of 3 machines for free users. I would have probably converted to paid, or another service, if not for unofficial clients (on mobile where smart sync is irrelevant) allowing me to stay under the limit
  - usefulcat 5y ago
    They push “ads” to get you to pay for more storage.
filmgirlcw 5y ago
This is a great client but I’ll add the no Smart Sync caveat. It’s funny, five or six years ago, that wasn’t a deal breaker (selective sync was all I needed), but it increasingly is now. I preferred this until Dropbox got an Apple Silicon client, but I think I’m too dependent on Smart Sync to use this as my primary client on primary machines. On secondary machines where I don’t need to access stuff as often, it’s great.
- dmos62 5y ago
  What's Smart Sync? Edit: https://help.dropbox.com/installs-integrations/sync-uploads/smart-sync https://help.dropbox.com/installs-integrations/sync-uploads/...
- donatj 5y ago
  Smart Sync is pretty broken in macOS 12.3 fwiw.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
jz_ 5y ago
are there any limits around the number of files? The official linux client starts to bug out somewhere over 250k files and gets stuck on "syncing". Dropbox support have said they don't recommend more than 100k files.
- kingcharles 5y ago
  Ugh. This might explain why my Dropbox client is forever broken on Windows too. I have hundreds of thousands of file. It will just never sync. I was about to start just pulling down multi-hundred-gig Zip files if the web UI would let me. Let's see if this app can do it. Now, if only someone would make a client for IDrive so I can exfiltrate all my data from there...
  - WayToDoor 5y ago
    Have you tried using rclone with their S3 backend? https://forum.rclone.org/t/setting-rclone-for-idrive/20822 https://forum.rclone.org/t/setting-rclone-for-idrive/20822
    - kingcharles 5y ago
      Thank you. I tried this some time ago from another article and could not get it to work. I'll try from your link and see how I get on.
encryptluks2 5y ago
I wish Dropbox was actually competitive. It is $20 more per year than Google, much slower speeds and caps, 2GB size limit, etc. The only people picking Dropbox are those that are naive or are connected to the brand.
- rad_gruchalski 5y ago
  Considering how easy it is to get banned on Google, I am not surprised.
- mattl 5y ago
  Google Drive doesn’t have a client for Linux and not everyone wants to use Google products.
- melony 5y ago
  $20 is a negligible cost for not putting all your eggs in one basket.
  - encryptluks2 5y ago
    That is there most basic personal plan. The costs savings are substantial with Google once you evaluate business plans compared to GSuite. Dropbox just doesn't compete and they are a dying product because of it. HN doesn't like to hear it, but it is the truth.
- GSGBen 5y ago
  I tried out Google Drive on Windows years ago when I was already using Dropbox, but its performance was terrible. It might be better now. To fix sync I had to reinstall and resync, I couldn't just point it at an existing folder with the files I had. I've used various incarnations of onedrive and it also doesn't hold up to Dropbox's performance. My main use case is all my audio recordings from my DAW - each take generates a small .wav and .reapeaks file. I use this as my live working folder - I read and write into my Dropbox folder while it's syncing. These add up (more count- than total-size- wise). I currently have 378k files, 23k folders, 754 GB and Dropbox is the only client that hasn't skipped a beat with it (even before they rewrote it in rust - it used to be python???? insane). It runs well on a 10-year-old CPU and even ran well before I moved it to an SSD. It's not perfect - onedrive keeps infinite document history, Dropbox a max of a year - but for anyone looking for sync performance I'd suggest looking at Dropbox first.
nsonha 5y ago
soft links do not seem to work on MacOS

175 points by lsferreira42 5y ago

It's not my project, just a very happy user here!

Ah. No easy way to get it working on Windows, sadly. And the official Windows Dropbox client is a no-go. I have too many files. It just never starts the sync. It thinks it has downloaded all my files, but they are always zero bytes and I am constantly going into the web UI to check it hasn't erased them all. Back to just download multi-hundred-gig .zips from the web UI to get my data out of Dropbox. IDrive's app is the same. No easy way to get your data back out. The only one that sort of works, but you have to go a folder at a time, is Mega's app. (put.io is nice because you can FTP to your files, but I don't consider them a cloud storage provider of the regular sort) Can't any cloud storage provider make a good app? Is rsync any good?

everythingness 5y ago

you can also run more than one dropbox account on the same machine using maestral

HNHatesUsers 5y ago

pfist 5y ago

I can't use this because I'm on Windows, but it looks cool. I love the idea of more fine-grained sync control with gitignore-style pattern matching. Neat!

Xavdidtheshadow 5y ago

I wanted to use this, but it doesn't handle Smart Sync, a feature I find myself really taking advantage of. But, I'm glad this sort of thing exists!

defensem3ch 5y ago

I've been using this for a while from Linux because my Dropbox folder is on an NTFS drive. It's very nice.

torstenvl 5y ago

I use maestral on macOS and it works great. More lightweight than the official client, and when I do a clean reinstall it's almost automatic via brew.

matthewmacleod 5y ago

Good to see this here! I started using Maestral after finding myself increasingly annoyed by the unfortunately shitty experience of the official client on the Mac (and the lack of a native ARM release at the time). What I really like is that I haven’t ever really noticed it’s there, which is exactly what you want from a bit of software like this. It’s a bit unfortunate that it doesn’t (or more accurately can’t) support smart sync, which is a very nice Dropbox feature. But it’s actually worth the sacrifice.

m1sta_ 5y ago
Why couldn't it support smart sync?

eric4smith 5y ago

Good stuff. But smart sync is a deal killer. I have a few hundred gigs of data in Dropbox at this point and smart sync is a big savior. But this would be awesome for Linux.

ocdtrekkie 5y ago

"Unlimited number of devices" would concern me here: Third party clients generally aren't too problematic for service companies... unless they bypass revenue somehow. I can't imagine Dropbox is thrilled this app bypasses a revenue tier.

oakesm9 5y ago
The device limit by Dropbox only applies to devices using the official client. This uses the official API, but Dropbox does not impose any limits on the number of apps using that. That’s why this doesn’t count towards your device limit. It’s not a workaround or a bypass, but just a quirk of how Dropbox bills for devices.

itake 5y ago

Just wondering, but how doe these clients exist? Wouldn't DD send a cease and desist or simple modify their API to disable it? Or are the leaning on how ppl don't want to update clients so DropBox actually can't make breaking API changes?

lelandfe 5y ago
If this is just using API endpoints I can’t see the justification for a cease & desist Although lack of justification has not impeded nastygrams in the past
quesera 5y ago
Why would Dropbox want to shut this down? They publish an API, and they encourage developers to integrate with their API. Dropbox isn't pushing ads at users, so it's not like Twitter or YouTube where unofficial clients are a threat to their business model. Very much the opposite, I think.
- stingraycharles 5y ago
  There are all kinds of reasons why an org would want to shut down third party clients like these; perhaps they feel like they could be held liable if the clients misbehave / delete all files, or feel like they want more control over the “Dropbox experience”. Remember, Twitter at one time was also pushing people to integrate into their ecosystem, but then decided to kill third party clients. In my case I’m super happy with maestral, as the vanilla Dropbox client doesn’t support my filesystem.
- kiririn 5y ago
  The official client has a limit of 3 machines for free users. I would have probably converted to paid, or another service, if not for unofficial clients (on mobile where smart sync is irrelevant) allowing me to stay under the limit
- usefulcat 5y ago
  They push “ads” to get you to pay for more storage.

filmgirlcw 5y ago

This is a great client but I’ll add the no Smart Sync caveat. It’s funny, five or six years ago, that wasn’t a deal breaker (selective sync was all I needed), but it increasingly is now. I preferred this until Dropbox got an Apple Silicon client, but I think I’m too dependent on Smart Sync to use this as my primary client on primary machines. On secondary machines where I don’t need to access stuff as often, it’s great.

dmos62 5y ago
What's Smart Sync? Edit: https://help.dropbox.com/installs-integrations/sync-uploads/smart-sync https://help.dropbox.com/installs-integrations/sync-uploads/...
donatj 5y ago
Smart Sync is pretty broken in macOS 12.3 fwiw.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

jz_ 5y ago

are there any limits around the number of files? The official linux client starts to bug out somewhere over 250k files and gets stuck on "syncing". Dropbox support have said they don't recommend more than 100k files.

kingcharles 5y ago
Ugh. This might explain why my Dropbox client is forever broken on Windows too. I have hundreds of thousands of file. It will just never sync. I was about to start just pulling down multi-hundred-gig Zip files if the web UI would let me. Let's see if this app can do it. Now, if only someone would make a client for IDrive so I can exfiltrate all my data from there...
- WayToDoor 5y ago
  Have you tried using rclone with their S3 backend? https://forum.rclone.org/t/setting-rclone-for-idrive/20822 https://forum.rclone.org/t/setting-rclone-for-idrive/20822
  - kingcharles 5y ago
    Thank you. I tried this some time ago from another article and could not get it to work. I'll try from your link and see how I get on.

encryptluks2 5y ago

I wish Dropbox was actually competitive. It is $20 more per year than Google, much slower speeds and caps, 2GB size limit, etc. The only people picking Dropbox are those that are naive or are connected to the brand.

rad_gruchalski 5y ago
Considering how easy it is to get banned on Google, I am not surprised.
mattl 5y ago
Google Drive doesn’t have a client for Linux and not everyone wants to use Google products.
melony 5y ago
$20 is a negligible cost for not putting all your eggs in one basket.
- encryptluks2 5y ago
  That is there most basic personal plan. The costs savings are substantial with Google once you evaluate business plans compared to GSuite. Dropbox just doesn't compete and they are a dying product because of it. HN doesn't like to hear it, but it is the truth.
GSGBen 5y ago
I tried out Google Drive on Windows years ago when I was already using Dropbox, but its performance was terrible. It might be better now. To fix sync I had to reinstall and resync, I couldn't just point it at an existing folder with the files I had. I've used various incarnations of onedrive and it also doesn't hold up to Dropbox's performance. My main use case is all my audio recordings from my DAW - each take generates a small .wav and .reapeaks file. I use this as my live working folder - I read and write into my Dropbox folder while it's syncing. These add up (more count- than total-size- wise). I currently have 378k files, 23k folders, 754 GB and Dropbox is the only client that hasn't skipped a beat with it (even before they rewrote it in rust - it used to be python???? insane). It runs well on a 10-year-old CPU and even ran well before I moved it to an SSD. It's not perfect - onedrive keeps infinite document history, Dropbox a max of a year - but for anyone looking for sync performance I'd suggest looking at Dropbox first.

nsonha 5y ago

soft links do not seem to work on MacOS