Laura Vogt | Cyberduck Blog

File History in Mountain Duck 4

Posted on June 17, 2020 by Laura Vogt

Mountain Duck 4 adds a file history feature which allows you to see which files were recently edited by you or someone else on the server and which files are currently transferred or pending synchronization.

Synchronization Progress

The sync progress area of the file history section shows the files that currently get synchronized and the files that will get synchronized after the current synchronization process. There are different synchronization states that can get displayed within that area: idle, active synchronization process, and prepare for synchronization.

Shown for active synchronization processes are transfer rate, remaining data, and already transferred data. If Mountain Duck synchronizes files in a badge, the file state might differ to the state within the file browser. The sync progress display limit is five entries.

Clicking on a file in the sync progress Mountain Duck reveals it in Finder or File Explorer on Windows.

Recently used Files

The second key section of the file history feature is the Recent Files area in which you can see the last 20 items that Mountain Duck uses for one of the following processes: delete, create, upload, and download. Also, a file may show up with an error state indicating an issue while synchronizing. Further details are available through the Finder or Explorer extension sync options menu item.

Clicking on a file in the Recent Files section Mountain Duck reveals it in Finder or File Explorer on Windows. You can clear out all entries of the list by clicking on the Clear Menu button at the end of the file history menu.

Cyberduck 7

Posted on June 5, 2019 by Laura Vogt

With Cyberduck 7 we introduce the possibility of a multi-segmented download. Multi-Segmented downloads offer the functionality to download one file over several connections. This has the advantage that some files can be downloaded faster and the download process is less error-prone.

In previous versions of Cyberduck, there was only the possibility to run downloads over a single serial connection, the multisegmented download feature multiplies the connections making a parallel download process possible. The following diagram visualizes the two types of download described.

You can expect at least a doubled download speed if you use the multisegment download functionality. Some additional time is required to concatenate the downloaded segments after the download itself is complete. We have collected the following data in download tests with downloads from Amazon S3 and a Minio server running locally.

	AWS EC2¹	Local System²
Regular Download	20 MByte/s	200 Mbyte/s
Segmented Download	40 Mbyte/s	1 GByte/s

¹ AWS EC2: T2.Medium against a regular S3 endpoint

² Local Minio S3 Server feeding data from local NVMe-PCIe-SSD

The described feature can be turned on or off in Preferences → Transfers → General → Downloads.

Refer to the full changelog for many more enhancements and bug fixes.

Mountain Duck 3 as an alternative to the Dropbox client application

Posted on April 23, 2019 by Laura Vogt

Mountain Duck 3, combined with any cloud storage, is a viable, more secure solution to synchronize access to documents on multiple computers and users. With Mountain Duck 3 you have the ability to make files and folders accessible for offline usage selectively. This has the advantage that not all data is kept on your local drive for offline usage compared to clients like Dropbox and Google Drive. Additionally, you can apply this principle to all of your bookmarks and not only on the already mentioned cloud storage provider.

Keep files selectively offline

Open Mountain Duck and connect to the desired Bookmark (We’ll use Dropbox in our example).
Navigate to the file or folder that you want to keep on the disk for offline usage.
Right-click on the desired file or folder and choose Sync Options → Keep Offline on Local Disk in the context menu. If you are using macOS you have to activate the Finder Extension in order to reach the described option.

Wait until the file is successfully synchronized. The chosen file or folder should show the following badge icon.

Now you can access the file when you aren’t connected to the Internet. All file changes will be synchronised as soon as connectivity to the remote storage is restored.

Connect to multiple accounts

You can mount multiple accounts at the same time if you have different Dropbox accounts. Create a new bookmark for every account and run through the OAuth flow. Make sure to log out of the Dropbox website prior setting up a new bookmark.

See also Access NextCloud from your desktop.

Access NextCloud from your desktop

Posted on April 23, 2019 by Laura Vogt

Update. Cyberduck 7.0.1 and Mountain Duck 3.0.3 now include a connection profile for Nextcloud & ownCloud by default allowing a more straightforward setup. You can now also select files to create a public share link.

You are looking for a way to connect to your NextCloud or OwnCloud server without loosing any hard disk space on your computer? Mountain Duck mounts your server storage as a network drive in which you can transfer and edit files. The following describes the connection process to NextCloud with a Mountain Duck Bookmark step-by-step.

Connect to your NextCloud or OwnCloud instance in your web browser and log in.
Click on the option Settings in the lower left of the screen and copy the displayed WebDAV address.

Start Mountain Duck, click on the icon in the tray area or status bar and choose the option New Bookmark.
Paste the previous copied WebDAV address into the server field and press tab. After that, the bookmark should have chosen WebDAV (HTTPS) on its own and should have split the WebDAV address into two parts – the server address and the default path.

Type your Username into the corresponding field and press Connect.

Enter your password in the login prompt displayed and choose Login.

The login and connection process opens automatically a Finder (macOS) or File Explorer (Windows) window with the network drive selected – ready to use.

See also Mountain Duck 3 as an alternative to the Dropbox client application.

Sharing Large Files

Posted on January 30, 2019 by Laura Vogt

You want to grant one or several people temporary access to large files? Email is not an option and providers offering a web interface are costly, limit the file size or tend to be unreliable. Cyberduck or Mountain Duck in combination with cloud storage providers allows you to share files without relying on a third-party website.

Auto Expiring Links

With Cyberduck or Mountain Duck and those cloud storage providers, you can share links with third parties that expire after an hour, days or months. Between the protocols, the expiration time of the shared links may vary. Contrary to other solutions there is no restrictions on bandwidth or the number of downloads.

Supported Providers

In the following section, you will find a short guide on how to share large files with Amazon S3, Microsoft Azure, Dropbox or OpenStack Swift cloud storage providers.

Step by Step

Open Cyberduck or Mountain Duck and connect to your Amazon S3, Microsoft Azure, Dropbox or OpenStack Swift bookmark.
Navigate to or upload the file you want to share
Right-click on the file, choose the option Copy URL in the context menu and click on the Pre-Signed URL (within Dropbox it is named Temporary URL) with the wanted expiration time. In Cyberduck the same option is available in Edit → Copy URL→ Signed URL. Share the link with anyone you want to give access to.

Update See also our documentation on sharing options for different storage service providers.

Accessing OneDrive & Sharepoint

Posted on January 16, 2019 by Laura Vogt

The number of different possible options for cloud storage provided by services available from Microsoft Office 365 is confusing and merits some further ado. There are two services available from Microsoft – OneDrive and SharePoint – which are hidden in a diversity of different packages. SharePoint is a cloud storage service which is only integrated in business packages while OneDrive is existing for personal and business usages. Every person who has a Microsoft Account does have access to the personal version of OneDrive. You can detect if you have a personal or business profile by looking at the email address. If you have a business profile the email address contains onmicrosoft.com.

In the following chart an overview of the most common business profile packages and whether the packages contain OneDrive, SharePoint or both is shown.

Product	Microsoft OneDrive	Microsoft SharePoint
Office 365 Business	✅	❌
Office 365 Business Premium	✅	✅
Office 365 Business Essentials	✅	✅
Microsoft 365 Business	✅	✅
Office/Microsoft 365 Enterprise	✅	✅
Office 365 ProPlus	✅	❌
Sharepoint Online	✅	✅

Cyberduck and Mountain Duck support OneDrive in personal and business edition as well as SharePoint through the default bundled connection profiles Microsoft OneDrive and Microsoft SharePoint. It doesn’t make any difference if you are using OneDrive personal or business there is only one profile that works for both. To connect to OneDrive or SharePoint with Cyberduck or Mountain Duck you have to create a corresponding bookmark which will connect to the services via Microsoft Graph.

Connecting to OneDrive Personal and Business

Click on “New Bookmark” if you are using Mountain Duck or on the “+” symbol in the browser window if you are using Cyberduck to create a new bookmark.
Choose the profile Microsoft OneDrive.
Type in the Username field your account email address and connect to the bookmark.

A window appears and prompts for an authentication code. Alongside with the authentication code prompt, a web browser window should open with the login page of Microsoft. Log into your account in the web browser window and copy the afterward appearing authentication code into the field in the authentication prompt window.

If you are using Cyberduck a browser window will appear. If you are using Mountain Duck Windows Explorer or Finder are opened revealing your OneDrive.

Connecting to SharePoint

Click on “New Bookmark” if you using Mountain Duck or on the “+” symbol in the browser window if you using Cyberduck to create a new bookmark.
Choose the previously installed profile Microsoft Sharepoint Document Library or the bundled profile Microsoft SharePoint.
Log in with your *.onmicrosoft.com account to login.microsoftonline.com to connect to your SharePoint document library. If you want to connect to SharePoint online you have to use your OneDrive personal account.

More information can be found in the Help Wiki for both OneDrive and Sharepoint.

Encrypt your Dropbox

Posted on November 15, 2018 by Laura Vogt

Mountain Duck and Cyberduck allow Cryptomator client-side encryption of your data which is missing in Dropbox and all other popular cloud storage solutions. You will find a description of how to use Cryptomator Vaults in Dropbox and access your documents from your computer and mobile in the following sections.

Encrypt your data with Mountain Duck and Cyberduck

Connect to your bookmark and navigate to the location where you want to store your secured data.
Right-click on white space and choose New Encrypted Vault in the context menu.

As described in the appearing window enter a name for your encrypted folder. Afterward, choose a password and confirm it by retyping it in the last field.

Double-click on your newly created Vault and unlock it by typing the password into the corresponding field.

The Vault opens. Now you can create or copy the documents you want to secure into the Vault to encrypt them.

Access your encrypted data with the Cryptomator app on your mobile.

Install the Cryptomator App on your mobile (IOS, Android).
Tab on the plus symbol and choose the option Add existing vault.
To open the previously created Cryptomator Vault choose the cloud service Dropbox, log into your account and navigate to the Vault.
Open the Vault folder and select the masterkey file which is named masterkey.cryptomator. After that, the app should show automatically the landing page of the Cryptomator app with the previously selected Vault pinned.
Tab on the pinned Vault and type the password into the corresponding field. The Vault should open right after you have unlocked it with the password and you have access to your secured data.

This process does not only work with Dropbox but with any other connection supported in Cyberduck and Mountain Duck. You can find more information on Cryptomator support in our wiki.