5 ms·

RSyncUI – A SwiftUI based macOS GUI for rsync

121 points by mickelsen 1y ago

joshstrange 1y ago
I’d love to see something similar for Rclone!
- whalesalad 1y ago
  rclone is magical software
- davidcollantes 1y ago
  Rclone comes with a web GUI now. See https://rclone.org/gui/ https://rclone.org/gui/. Granted, not native, not as polished, but fairly functional.
nkmnz 1y ago
[flagged]
- mayoff 1y ago
  This is a copy of an infamous comment about the then-new Dropbox: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224
  - whalesalad 1y ago
    Thanks -- was about to say... FTP? SVN? What year is it?!
  - neepi 1y ago
    Well that's pretty funny, but is it really? Most people within my circles don't use cloud storage any more, me included. This is a combination of being cheapskates, being fucked over on billing issues with no support (Microsoft), getting their account hacked (Google), actual tangible data loss (iCloud) or having genuine privacy concerns (all of them). We all have USB sticks. Some of us use rsync :)
    - aegypti 1y ago
      Over the holidays I used an admittedly large USB stick to transfer photos from my aunt’s 2011 netbook onto my MacBook signed into her iCloud Photos because she doesn’t own a computer, and both her and my 13yo cousin asked if it was a vape.
      - account-5 1y ago
        This is simply amazing!
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
AnonC 1y ago
This seems quite useful to me. Since I use rsync for specific purposes that tend to be used repeatedly (but not changing environments/purposes), it always requires a little bit of reading the manual and/or searching online plus some trial and error to figure out the parameters (with a dry run). BTW, the documentation [1] mentions installing a newer version of rsync using Homebrew. I’d suggest including Macports rsync [2], which also provides 3.x (right now at 3.4.1). [1]: https://rsyncui.netlify.app/docs/settings/rsyncandpath/ https://rsyncui.netlify.app/docs/settings/rsyncandpath/ [2]: https://ports.macports.org/port/rsync/ https://ports.macports.org/port/rsync/
- dandaka 1y ago
  Try warp.dev, you won't need to read manual anymore
MortyWaves 1y ago
Are there any good rsync GUIs for Windows?
- tyingq 1y ago
  Rsync is pretty closely tied to unixy concepts of permissions, paths, access times, etc. You can find some rsync based tools for Windows, but IMO, it's a square peg / round hole unless you're using it inside of WSL.
  - blue_pants 1y ago
    robocopy is the Windows equivalent of rsync
    - huhtenberg 1y ago
      Kinda, sorta. Robocopy is a very good tool, but it cannot do incremental file updates. Already mentioned bvckup2 can do deltas, but it's not an rsync client.
- tomovo 1y ago
  I use Bvckup2 for doing Windows backups; it's commercial but works really well for me.
- encom 1y ago
  Windows has rsync?
  - MortyWaves 1y ago
    rsync is a library.
- rzzzt 1y ago
  I used QtdSync for a while (in differential mode which uses hardlinks on NTFS): https://qtdtools.com/page.php?tool=0&sub=0&lang=en https://qtdtools.com/page.php?tool=0&sub=0&lang=en At some point I forgot about the scheme and started synchronizing things manually.
HeckFeck 1y ago
Looks very good. I'm glad to see more things happening in SwiftUI - proper desktop apps are not gone yet!
mhw 1y ago
A related tool that I've found useful over the years is Unison [1]. Think of it as rsync where you can interactively adjust the reconciliation algorithm between the two sides of the sync connection. It stores a hash of the file contents from the previous run for each file, so it can work out whether each side has changed since the last run. It then presents you with a GUI (or TUI) to review and adjust the reconciliation. For the periods of my career where I've lived the two computer life (desktop and laptop), I've used Unison to keep substantial parts of my home directory in sync between the two machines. [1]: https://github.com/bcpierce00/unison https://github.com/bcpierce00/unison
Bender 1y ago
Nice. It would be nifty if this could also front-end LFTP. Using the mirror subsystem LFTP can replicate the behavior of rsync in a chroot sftp-only environment which I use heavily when I do not wish to give people a shell. If there was a UI it would be easier to help less technical people to use LFTP.
nesarkvechnep 1y ago
Is this your first SwiftUI app? The table and the sidebar have weird padding and as someone primarily focused on front-end in the past, it makes me uncomfortable. The sidebar can be a NavigationStack, currently it doesn't look like it.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- mickelsen 1y ago
  Not mine, just sharing what I found! Otherwise I'd have used "Show HN".
dmarinus 1y ago
I don't like GUIs for this so I made a simple cli frontend for rsync/rclone so I can just run pull/push in a directory like git. https://github.com/meeuw/rzn https://github.com/meeuw/rzn
lproven 1y ago
My main Mac can't run Sonoma without OCLP and I'm perfectly happy on Monterey for now, so I will skip. I already have RSyncOSX, which after quite a bit of Googling and digging seems to be an older app by the same author. https://github.com/rsyncOSX/RsyncOSX_archived https://github.com/rsyncOSX/RsyncOSX_archived As opposed to the new: https://github.com/rsyncOSX/RsyncOSX https://github.com/rsyncOSX/RsyncOSX Before that, I used to use ARsync: https://arrsync.sourceforge.net/ https://arrsync.sourceforge.net/ https://www.bartbusschots.ie/s/2006/11/26/arrsync-an-rsync-gui-for-mac-os-x/ https://www.bartbusschots.ie/s/2006/11/26/arrsync-an-rsync-g... It was, as I recall, nicer still but it's no longer maintained and the x86-32 binary no longer runs.
w10-1 1y ago
Sorry, I noticed the XPC code is the generic to add numbers. Unused? And the application is not sandboxed?[1] The trick with an app like this is the risk of launching an external process, or building the app to include the binaries, thus avoiding some security risk (and possibly using XPC for inter-op updates). Would you like to summarize how you identified and addressed the risks, and your approach for building/bundling/deploying the app? [1] https://github.com/rsyncOSX/RsyncUI/blob/main/RsyncUI/RsyncUI.entitlements https://github.com/rsyncOSX/RsyncUI/blob/main/RsyncUI/RsyncU...
ctippett 1y ago
Not to detract from the author's efforts, but Transmit[1] has a feature that lets you synchronise two folders (as well as being a great all-round SFTP/remote file browser). [1] https://help.panic.com/transmit/transmit5/synchronize/ https://help.panic.com/transmit/transmit5/synchronize/
watersb 1y ago
There was a discussion recently about macOS Serious changing the default implementation of rsync to OpenRsync. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43605003 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43605003 I posted a comment regarding Mike Bombich's "Carbon Copy Cloner", which at least started as a GUI wrapper around an rsync that's been patched to handle Mac extended attributes and related features that date from the Classic MacOS era. Carbon Copy Cloner is commercial software, but Bombich released his patches to rsync as open source. My comment has some links to historical context of his work. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43606281 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43606281 Maybe of interest here.

121 points by mickelsen 1y ago

joshstrange 1y ago

I’d love to see something similar for Rclone!

whalesalad 1y ago
rclone is magical software
davidcollantes 1y ago
Rclone comes with a web GUI now. See https://rclone.org/gui/ https://rclone.org/gui/. Granted, not native, not as polished, but fairly functional.

nkmnz 1y ago

[flagged]

mayoff 1y ago
This is a copy of an infamous comment about the then-new Dropbox: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224
- whalesalad 1y ago
  Thanks -- was about to say... FTP? SVN? What year is it?!
- neepi 1y ago
  Well that's pretty funny, but is it really? Most people within my circles don't use cloud storage any more, me included. This is a combination of being cheapskates, being fucked over on billing issues with no support (Microsoft), getting their account hacked (Google), actual tangible data loss (iCloud) or having genuine privacy concerns (all of them). We all have USB sticks. Some of us use rsync :)
  - aegypti 1y ago
    Over the holidays I used an admittedly large USB stick to transfer photos from my aunt’s 2011 netbook onto my MacBook signed into her iCloud Photos because she doesn’t own a computer, and both her and my 13yo cousin asked if it was a vape.
    - account-5 1y ago
      This is simply amazing!
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]

AnonC 1y ago

This seems quite useful to me. Since I use rsync for specific purposes that tend to be used repeatedly (but not changing environments/purposes), it always requires a little bit of reading the manual and/or searching online plus some trial and error to figure out the parameters (with a dry run). BTW, the documentation [1] mentions installing a newer version of rsync using Homebrew. I’d suggest including Macports rsync [2], which also provides 3.x (right now at 3.4.1). [1]: https://rsyncui.netlify.app/docs/settings/rsyncandpath/ https://rsyncui.netlify.app/docs/settings/rsyncandpath/ [2]: https://ports.macports.org/port/rsync/ https://ports.macports.org/port/rsync/

dandaka 1y ago
Try warp.dev, you won't need to read manual anymore

MortyWaves 1y ago

Are there any good rsync GUIs for Windows?

tyingq 1y ago
Rsync is pretty closely tied to unixy concepts of permissions, paths, access times, etc. You can find some rsync based tools for Windows, but IMO, it's a square peg / round hole unless you're using it inside of WSL.
- blue_pants 1y ago
  robocopy is the Windows equivalent of rsync
  - huhtenberg 1y ago
    Kinda, sorta. Robocopy is a very good tool, but it cannot do incremental file updates. Already mentioned bvckup2 can do deltas, but it's not an rsync client.
tomovo 1y ago
I use Bvckup2 for doing Windows backups; it's commercial but works really well for me.
encom 1y ago
Windows has rsync?
- MortyWaves 1y ago
  rsync is a library.
rzzzt 1y ago
I used QtdSync for a while (in differential mode which uses hardlinks on NTFS): https://qtdtools.com/page.php?tool=0&sub=0&lang=en https://qtdtools.com/page.php?tool=0&sub=0&lang=en At some point I forgot about the scheme and started synchronizing things manually.

HeckFeck 1y ago

Looks very good. I'm glad to see more things happening in SwiftUI - proper desktop apps are not gone yet!

mhw 1y ago

A related tool that I've found useful over the years is Unison [1]. Think of it as rsync where you can interactively adjust the reconciliation algorithm between the two sides of the sync connection. It stores a hash of the file contents from the previous run for each file, so it can work out whether each side has changed since the last run. It then presents you with a GUI (or TUI) to review and adjust the reconciliation. For the periods of my career where I've lived the two computer life (desktop and laptop), I've used Unison to keep substantial parts of my home directory in sync between the two machines. [1]: https://github.com/bcpierce00/unison https://github.com/bcpierce00/unison

Bender 1y ago

Nice. It would be nifty if this could also front-end LFTP. Using the mirror subsystem LFTP can replicate the behavior of rsync in a chroot sftp-only environment which I use heavily when I do not wish to give people a shell. If there was a UI it would be easier to help less technical people to use LFTP.

nesarkvechnep 1y ago

Is this your first SwiftUI app? The table and the sidebar have weird padding and as someone primarily focused on front-end in the past, it makes me uncomfortable. The sidebar can be a NavigationStack, currently it doesn't look like it.

deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
mickelsen 1y ago
Not mine, just sharing what I found! Otherwise I'd have used "Show HN".

dmarinus 1y ago

I don't like GUIs for this so I made a simple cli frontend for rsync/rclone so I can just run pull/push in a directory like git. https://github.com/meeuw/rzn https://github.com/meeuw/rzn

lproven 1y ago

My main Mac can't run Sonoma without OCLP and I'm perfectly happy on Monterey for now, so I will skip. I already have RSyncOSX, which after quite a bit of Googling and digging seems to be an older app by the same author. https://github.com/rsyncOSX/RsyncOSX_archived https://github.com/rsyncOSX/RsyncOSX_archived As opposed to the new: https://github.com/rsyncOSX/RsyncOSX https://github.com/rsyncOSX/RsyncOSX Before that, I used to use ARsync: https://arrsync.sourceforge.net/ https://arrsync.sourceforge.net/ https://www.bartbusschots.ie/s/2006/11/26/arrsync-an-rsync-gui-for-mac-os-x/ https://www.bartbusschots.ie/s/2006/11/26/arrsync-an-rsync-g... It was, as I recall, nicer still but it's no longer maintained and the x86-32 binary no longer runs.

w10-1 1y ago

Sorry, I noticed the XPC code is the generic to add numbers. Unused? And the application is not sandboxed?[1] The trick with an app like this is the risk of launching an external process, or building the app to include the binaries, thus avoiding some security risk (and possibly using XPC for inter-op updates). Would you like to summarize how you identified and addressed the risks, and your approach for building/bundling/deploying the app? [1] https://github.com/rsyncOSX/RsyncUI/blob/main/RsyncUI/RsyncUI.entitlements https://github.com/rsyncOSX/RsyncUI/blob/main/RsyncUI/RsyncU...

ctippett 1y ago

Not to detract from the author's efforts, but Transmit[1] has a feature that lets you synchronise two folders (as well as being a great all-round SFTP/remote file browser). [1] https://help.panic.com/transmit/transmit5/synchronize/ https://help.panic.com/transmit/transmit5/synchronize/

watersb 1y ago

There was a discussion recently about macOS Serious changing the default implementation of rsync to OpenRsync. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43605003 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43605003 I posted a comment regarding Mike Bombich's "Carbon Copy Cloner", which at least started as a GUI wrapper around an rsync that's been patched to handle Mac extended attributes and related features that date from the Classic MacOS era. Carbon Copy Cloner is commercial software, but Bombich released his patches to rsync as open source. My comment has some links to historical context of his work. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43606281 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43606281 Maybe of interest here.