Rclone Browser NG

Simple cross-platform GUI for the rclone command line tool.

Community continuation of kapitainsky/RcloneBrowser (itself a fork of mmozeiko/RcloneBrowser). Both upstream repositories are abandoned; this fork restores compatibility with modern rclone and Qt 6 and continues fixing bugs and adding features.

Supports Windows, macOS, GNU/Linux and the BSD family.

What NG fixes over the abandoned upstream

• Works with modern rclone (v1.56+) — transfer progress, size, bandwidth and ETA parse correctly again
• Builds with Qt 6 (minimum 6.4) — required for Wayland and current Linux distributions
• rclone config works with modern terminal emulators (gnome-terminal 3.38+, kitty, alacritty, wezterm, foot, tilix, …)
• Delete runs as a background job instead of freezing the GUI
• Multiple simultaneous mounts work on Windows (RC port collision fixed)
• Cancelled jobs actually terminate the underlying rclone process
• Many crash, reliability and dark-mode fixes — see CHANGELOG.md

Features

• Browse and modify any rclone remote, including encrypted ones
• Uses the same configuration file as rclone — no extra configuration required
• Custom location and encryption support for rclone.conf
• Navigate multiple remotes simultaneously in separate tabs
• Hierarchical file listing with name, size and modify date
• Visible path and filter controls for faster browsing without relying on hidden shortcuts
• All rclone commands run asynchronously — no GUI freezing
• Lazily cached file hierarchy for fast folder traversal
• Upload, download, create folders, rename, move and delete files and folders
• Calculate folder sizes, export file lists, copy rclone commands to clipboard
• Run multiple jobs in the background, with per-file progress
• Cohesive light and dark native interface with clear focus states, status badges, context-aware action hints, inline validation and polished empty/loading/error feedback
• Drag & drop from your file explorer to upload
• Stream media files to a player such as mpv or VLC
• Mount and unmount remotes (Windows needs WinFsp; macOS can use macFUSE 5.2+, fuse-t, or rclone nfsmount when available)
• Optional tray icon with finished-transfer notifications
• Portable mode — keep the app, rclone and its config on a memory stick
• Google Drive "shared with me" support
• Public link generation for remotes that support sharing
• Saved tasks — create a job once, then run or edit it later (with dry-run support)
• Configurable dark mode on all systems

How to get it

Build from source using the instructions below. Maintainer-published artifacts, when available, are linked from the releases page; this repository does not provide a CI build or artifact-attestation service.

Local release verification

Before publishing a locally built artifact, run:

python scripts/release_check.py

The harness validates version and release disclosures, parses AppStream metadata, checks the local release scripts, builds the selected Release configuration, runs the offscreen CTest suite, and smoke-tests the built executable with --version. It prints the CI-only guarantees that are intentionally unavailable here; platform packaging remains an explicit step through the matching script in scripts/.

Package-manager manifest artifacts

After the platform artifacts and a source archive are present in release/, generate reviewable, non-submitted package-manager manifests with:

python scripts/generate_package_manifests.py --release-dir release --output release/package-manifests --require windows --require macos --require flatpak

The generator emits validated Winget, Chocolatey, Homebrew Cask, and Flatpak files with the exact artifact URLs and SHA256 values. It writes manifest-index.json with "submitted": false; publishing or submitting those files remains an explicit maintainer action.

Build instructions

Linux

1. Install dependencies:
   • Debian/Ubuntu: sudo apt update && sudo apt -y install git g++ cmake make qt6-base-dev libgl1-mesa-dev
   • Fedora: sudo dnf -y install git g++ cmake make qt6-qtbase-devel
   • Arch/Manjaro: sudo pacman -Sy --noconfirm --needed git gcc cmake make qt6-base
2. git clone https://github.com/SysAdminDoc/RcloneBrowserNG.git && cd RcloneBrowserNG
3. mkdir build && cd build
4. cmake ..
5. make
6. sudo make install

FreeBSD

1. sudo pkg install git cmake qt6-base
2. Then follow the Linux steps from step 2.

Note: for rclone mounts to work you may need sudo sysctl vfs.usermount=1 — see this rclone forum thread.

Note: rclone does not support mount on OpenBSD/NetBSD, so the feature is disabled there.

macOS

1. Install Homebrew if you don't have it
2. brew install git cmake rclone qt@6
3. git clone https://github.com/SysAdminDoc/RcloneBrowserNG.git && cd RcloneBrowserNG
4. mkdir build && cd build
5. cmake .. -DCMAKE_PREFIX_PATH=$(brew --prefix qt@6)
6. make
7. Package with Qt libraries to create a self-contained app: $(brew --prefix qt@6)/bin/macdeployqt build/rclone-browser.app

For macOS mounts, install a current userspace backend: macFUSE 5.2 or newer, fuse-t, or an rclone build that includes nfsmount. Rclone Browser NG detects these at mount time and avoids steering users toward legacy kext-only setups.

Windows

1. Install Visual Studio 2022 (the "Desktop development with C++" workload is enough — Build Tools also work)
2. Install CMake
3. Install Qt 6 (64-bit, MSVC) from the Qt website — release packaging should use Qt 6.8.8+ or 6.11.1+; these steps assume C:\Qt
4. git clone https://github.com/SysAdminDoc/RcloneBrowserNG.git && cd RcloneBrowserNG
5. mkdir build && cd build
6. cmake -G "Visual Studio 17 2022" -A x64 -DCMAKE_CONFIGURATION_TYPES="Release" -DCMAKE_PREFIX_PATH=C:\Qt\6.8.8\msvc2019_64 .. && cmake --build . --config Release
7. C:\Qt\6.8.8\msvc2019_64\bin\windeployqt.exe --no-translations ".\build\Release\RcloneBrowser.exe"
8. build\Release now contains RcloneBrowser.exe and everything required to run it

Portable vs standard mode

In standard mode configuration is stored in the usual per-user locations:

• macOS:
  • preferences: ~/Library/Preferences/com.rclone-browser.rclone-browser.plist
  • tasks file: ~/Library/Application Support/rclone-browser/rclone-browser/tasks.bin
• Linux/BSD:
  • preferences: ~/.config/rclone-browser/rclone-browser.conf
  • tasks file: ~/.local/share/rclone-browser/rclone-browser/tasks.bin
• Windows:
  • preferences: registry HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\rclone-browser\rclone-browser
  • tasks file: %LOCALAPPDATA%\rclone-browser\rclone-browser\tasks.bin

To enable portable mode, create an .ini file next to the executable with the same name — e.g. for RcloneBrowser.exe create RcloneBrowser.ini (for a macOS bundle, next to the .app). For Linux AppImages create a directory named <appimage>.config next to the AppImage file, per the AppImage portable-mode spec.

In portable mode all configuration lives next to the application, and the rclone binary and rclone.conf paths may be relative to the executable — so everything can live on a memory stick.

History

This project keeps a long-running community tool alive. Martins Mozeiko wrote the original Rclone Browser; kapitainsky maintained a widely-used fork through 2020 with many fixes and features; both repositories then went dormant while rclone kept evolving and eventually broke them. RcloneBrowserNG picks up from the kapitainsky line with modern rclone and Qt 6 compatibility.