Free Dropbox Client Maestral Will Eventually Stop Working

[H_D]

Despite all problems with the App in recent times («no internet connection» bug) I still like Dropbox a lot. Almost seamless finder integration, much faster and reliable than iCloud, relatively fine-grained control. I'm not sure LAN-Sync is back, but that is due to Apple (as is the stupid new location in the library, basically Cupertino kneecapping the competition. Being able to check a file on the go, have backup of the current project files etc... I still haven't quite found a replacement yet, although there is some competition. I liked «paper», but most of the tangential stuff DB offers is not for me, really. Maestral is a very nice piece of software, but I always preferred the original app, despite it being wrapped in Electron... it just works more seamlessly with finders etc.

 

[kirbyrun]

Has anyone tried using Mountain Duck as their Dropbox client? Just wondering. I really like Maestral, but I'm curious if Mountain Duck could replace it.

Edit: Typo

 

[josehill]

Dropbox's standard client does try to shoehorn too many functions into one bucket. I don't find it to be a problem on my M1 Air, but it can be a burden on Intel machines. Having said that, it has been rock solid for many years in my experience, both using the business and personal editions.

If you're interested in self-hosted approaches, you can investigate solutions like OwnCloud and NextCloud, to start.

 

[sclough]

What are people moving to instead of Dropbox?

Is there a self-hosted solution that matches the ease/turnkey of Dropbox?

I started using Dropbox in the early days and then it gradually became more frustrating for me personally. A few years ago I decided to switch completely based on changes Dropbox kept making. I spent a lot of time looking at options and, in the end, I switched to Tresorit. I wanted the original dropbox concept–a fully local folder that worked perfectly on and offline as well as a synched cloud folder that could be shared and also serves as a backup.

The privacy of Tresorit is obviously much, much better since Dropbox has become a bit of a privacy nightmare. However, what surprised me is that in terms of functionality I love Tresorit much more than I did Dropbox. For example, you can choose any folder anywhere on your drive and sync it to a Tresorit folder. In my case, I have multiple synched folders that are each synched to a remote Tresorit folder essentially giving me multiple "dropboxes." This is much easier to manage for me than having one giant synched folder since I have different work areas and different collections of files with different sharing setups, etc. And then I also have a remote only drive I don't need to sync at all to my local folder so I used it like a google drive style sharing folder for documents I need to share online but don't need a local copy.

I think for very, very large files their sync is not as efficient as Dropbox. However, in years of use I've never had any sync issues and much prefer it to what Dropbox became.

 

[brownbird]

Nooo! This works perfectly and keeps the Dropbox bloat off my system. Sad to hear about this!

Would be down to pay a few bucks a month for this, in case this changes the dev’s mind.

 

[Mac Fly (film)]

I never knew this existed. I barely use dropbox (just to sync a budget folder), and I've always felt that it uses too much memory for a sync app.

They got too big and forgot the simplicity of the feature is why they were used. Ultimately built-in cloud sync is probably bound to replace third party sync apps on various platforms. They got so they would nag you, email you generally the app became annoying and onerous and required too much attention and thought, IMO. Steve was imperfect and even often wrong, but calling Dropbox a feature was the right call. Dropbox were ballsy to not sell to Apple that time, but as a user of Apple products I would have preferred they did tbh.

Btw every piece of software that exists today will eventually stop working.

 

[kOoLiNuS]

What are people moving to instead of Dropbox?

Is there a self-hosted solution that matches the ease/turnkey of Dropbox?

the self hosting way exposes you to a series of infinite problems (cloud storage costs, backup costs, implementation of the 'right' version of the php / mysql / whatever). Sometimes it's just nice to pay someone and not have the burden to keep everything up by yourself

 

[kOoLiNuS]

The thing is, I'm not aware of a single solution that requires virtually no setup, works as easily and seamlessly, and can be used on any platform. The list is really, really short for non-technophile users.

I'm not a huge fan of the company, but the product itself is quite good (leaving out all the silly B.S. they keep trying to push on users).

At the time I really hoped Steve would purchase them and gave us an iCloud storage system based on their technology.

As for Syncthing please do note it syncs EVERYTHING in the folder you point the service to. And on iOS I know there's no real client for the protocol…

 

[MacBH928]

I wonder to which service he migrated to

What are people moving to instead of Dropbox?

@mdragoni

I thought you would never ask:

• Google Drive
• Microsoft OneDrive
• Box
• pCloud
• Sync.com
• Tresorit
• MEGA
• iCloud Drive
• Filen.io
• box
• ProtonDrive

this is just a list not recommendations. Please note Filen.io is made by small team like 5 people, ProtonDrive is super encrypted so much so the search functionality is limited in the ios app.

Is there a self-hosted solution that matches the ease/turnkey of Dropbox?

you can search for FOSS home server operating systems . There is umbrel which is supposed to be the easiest but I think you need to buy their hardware. there is also YunoHost can Casa OS which i think is simpler to use. And of course the usual synology.

 

[knirirr]

What are people moving to instead of Dropbox?

Is there a self-hosted solution that matches the ease/turnkey of Dropbox?

I have set up rclone to auto-mount Dropbox when I log in; this doesn't sync files locally, but rclone can apparently do that: https://rclone.org/bisync/

This is on Linux, but rclone is available via Homebrew so I'd guess a similar solution would work on a Mac.