Author: David Kocher

Alternative to the official Dropbox client

Posted on by David Kocher

Dropbox recently adopted the File Provider API available on macOS to be used as the exclusive way to synchronize files with their own app. The most prominent change from a user perspective is the limitation to store all synchronized files in ~/Library/CloudStorage as required by the File Provider API. Many users with large data sets preferred to set a custom location on an external disk previously which is no longer an option.

Use Mountain Duck instead of the official Dropbox client

Mountain Duck is a viable alternative to the official Dropbox client. It allows to connect to and synchronize your files in Dropbox without any additional bloat. In Mountain Duck Preferences, you can change your cache location to a different folder or even to an external drive.

Connecting to Dropbox

Mounting your Dropbox in Finder is straight forward using Mountain Duck:

  • Select Open Connection within the Mountain Duck dropdown menu
  • A new bookmark window will pop up
  • Select Dropbox from the protocol section on the top and choose Connect
  • Your web browser will open leading you through the authentication and authorization flow

Once successfully connected, your files from Dropbox will open in Finder. To connect to a single folder instead of the root, add a path to your bookmark configuration. Without adding a Path to the bookmark configuration, you will be connected to the root of your Dropbox.

Connect to multiple accounts

Connect to and work with multiple Dropbox accounts simultaneously. Repeat the above steps to connect to an additional Dropbox account you may have access. Open a new bookmark and login to the other Dropbox account in your web browser when authorizing access for Mountain Duck.

Use Cyberduck to retrieve files from Dropbox without syncing

Alternatively, use Cyberduck to browse your Dropbox without syncing the files to your computer.

Box

Posted on by David Kocher

Cyberduck 8.2 and Mountain Duck 4.10.0 introduce support for accessing Box not only through their FTP or WebDAV gateway but using the native Box API. This should not only improve performance but additionally allow enabling two-factor authentication (2FA) for the account. The new implementation allows to create download and upload shares of files or folders for people who are not Box users by using File → Share…in Cybereduck or Create Download Share or Create Upload Share from the Mountain Duck context menu respectively.

Download Mountain Duck as an alternative to Box Drive.

🏠 Moving to GitHub

Posted on by David Kocher

We previously only had mirror repository for Cyberduck on GitHub and managed pull requests for changes on our own Git server and mirrored all changes to a SVN repository which was used to display a timeline of changes in Trac.

We are now using the repository on GitHub as the primary source root and accept pull requests at the same place. Previous milestone history has been preserved. This will make contributions more straightforward and simplify the development setup for many.

Issues

We now use Github as well to manage all issues containing bug reports or feature requests. We have migrated all previous 11919 tickets opened in Trac since 2005 to GitHub.

Documentation

Additionally we will also retire the current documentation in the Wiki and move it to docs.cyberduck.io. Contributions to the documentation written in Markdown are welcome can be made by opening a pull request.

Big Sur

Posted on by David Kocher

We have made some adjustments in version 7.7 of Cyberduck to support the new window appearance introduced in macOS 11. Switching between bookmarks and browser view is now always visible in the toolbar.

The bookmark proxy icon is now displayed inline with the other toolbar controls including the bookmark nickname replacing the previous window title.

Additionally the input field to search for bookmarks or files is now located in the toolbar and treated accordingly.

When horizontal space is limited, the toolbar can display the Search button in place of the search bar. When people click the Search button, the bar expands; when they click elsewhere in the window, the search bar collapses and the toolbar displays the button again.

Restore from Glacier

Posted on by David Kocher

We have made available a feature in Cyberduck 7.6 and later to restore files from Glacier storage class in S3. You can temporarily restore files from Glacier using File → Restore for files with the storage class set to Glacier. The file will be restored using standard retrieval and expire in 2 days after retrieval. Restoring takes some time and attempting to download an item not yet restored will lead to an error The operation is not valid for the object’s storage class.