rclone for Google Drive and Dropbox
rclone seamlessly connects to remote cloud storage on Mac, Linux, Windows and several other operating systems for cloud storage services including:
- Google Drive / Shared Drive
- Dropbox
- Amazon S3
- Microsoft OneDrive
The rclone
interface is easy to use programatically (like rsync) without bothering to install weighty GUI clients that might not properly support your operating system.
In general, remote storage solutions will be rate-limited.
“Unlimited” storage such as for Google Workspace for Education, which has unlimited storage space has limited upload and download speed.
rclone
isn’t bothered by encrypted filesystems, unlike the
official Dropbox client.
Install
Setup Rclone for your operating system:
add various remote file shares (Google Drive, Dropbox, etc.) by:
rclone config
Usage
Note: rclone ≥ 1.37 is necessary for Google Shared Drives.
In these examples, remote
is the particular drive name you chose during rclone config
.
Configuration is stored in ~/.config/rclone/rclone.conf
.
Finding remote directory contents
List remote directories
rclone lsd remote:
list remote directories under
path/to
rclone lsd remote:path/to
list remote files under
path/to
rclone ls remote:path/to
count number of files in
path/to
rclone ls remote:path/to | wc -l
Copy/sync with remote
copy in rclone by default does not clobber existing remote files, if they haven’t been changed.
recursively copy local computer
~/path
to remoterclone copy ~/path remote:path -v
copy only this directory contents
~/path
to remoterclone copy --max-depth 0 ~/path remote:path -v
Using rclone sync requires caution, because sync DELETES files on remote that are not also on local PC!
sync local computer
~/path
to the remoterclone sync ~/path remote:path -v
Notes
- rclone changelog
- rclone Google Drive
- rclone Dropbox