Mountain Duck

Access NextCloud from your desktop

Posted on 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 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 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.

ProductMicrosoft OneDriveMicrosoft 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.

🦆 Mountain Duck 3 – Public Beta

Posted on by David Kocher

We are thrilled to release a public beta of upcoming Mountain Duck 3. The new version is a major milestone in our development timeline. Bridging the gap between online only access with no use of local disk space in Mountain Duck 2 and the new smart synchronization feature in Mountain Duck 3 with much improved performance accessing files is the main focus.

Think of it like Dropbox for any server and cloud storage but with the option to choose which files and folders are available for offline use while others do not take up disk space on your computer.

Smart Synchronization for Offline Usage

The smart synchronization feature allows to make files available offline. You can also choose to make explicitly all or only selected files and folders available for offline use. Changes to files are saved in a local cache first and uploaded in the background as soon as a connection is available.

Badge icons in the Finder and Windows Explorer indicate the status of files – which indicates if the file is only available when online or is synced to your computer for offline editing. Regardless of the status, you will always see all your files!

Synchronization with the remote storage is paused and resumed automatically depending on your network connection but can also be paused by the user manually. You will see a blinking duck icon in your system tray when a background transfer is currently in progress.

Documentation

Updated documentation for the new smart synchronization feature can be found in our wiki.

Changelog

The full changelog reads

  • Feature Local cache of remote storage to work with when offline
  • Feature Explicitly select files or folders to be available offline using context menu
  • Feature Automatically add files to local cache for offline access when opened
  • Feature Immediate save of files in local cache with upload to remote storage in background
  • Feature Badge icons on files and folders with sync status
  • Feature Pulsating icon in status bar indicates background sync in progress
  • Feature Menu item to manually pause and resume background sync
  • Feature Option to enable background indexer to allow browsing folders when offline
  • Feature Custom disk icons for mounted volumes in Finder (macOS)

Try it today!

We are looking forward to any feedback you may have! Give it a try by choosing Beta in Preferences → Update → Check for Update….

Version 3 will be a paid upgrade to sustain our development efforts. Discounts for existing users between 40% to 100% depending on the date of purchase.

Encrypt your Dropbox

Posted on 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.

Connecting using AssumeRole from AWS Security Token Service (STS)

Posted on by David Kocher

Instead of providing Access Key ID and Secret Access Key, authenticate using temporary credentials from AWS Security Token Service (STS) with optional Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA), making Cyberduck and Mountain Duck more friendly to enterprise deployments. You will need to install the custom connection profile S3 (Credentials from AWS Security Token Service) available from our website.

Our implementation to obtain temporary credentials is interoperable with standard AWS CLI configuration in ~/.aws/credentials. Refer to our wiki for documentation.

Skip writing temporary application files to remote volume

Posted on by David Kocher

We have taken a big leap forward in performance working on remote volumes with Mountain Duck from applications that read and write temporary files when saving documents. Extended attributes and temporary files from applications are no longer saved on the remote volume but in a local temporary cache only.

This change in version 2.1 significantly speeds up read and write operations from applications.

Joyent Triton Object Storage

Posted on by David Kocher

Triton Object Storage (previously named Manta Storage) by Joyent is now supported in Cyberduck 6.3 and Mountain Duck 2.2. Make sure to install the connection profile.

Their storage backend implementation is open source.

All the pieces required to deploy and operate your own Manta are open source

Triton Object storage touts itself as

Proven at production scale, Triton Object Storage delivers replication, clustering, failover, and backup and recovery capabilites. Robust security is built in, including object level security and access, deep role based access control, and client SSH and data encryption.

Update: Read more about the Triton Object Storage and Cyberduck on the Joyent Blog.

Google Team Drives

Posted on by David Kocher

We have added support for Google Team Drives in both Cyberduck 6.3 and and Mountain Duck 2.2.

Google Team Drives are shared spaces where teams can easily store, search, and access their files. Unlike files in My Drive, files in Team Drive belong to the team instead of an individual. Even if members leave, the files stay exactly where they are so your team can continue to share information and get work done. Team Drives is available on G Suite Enterprise, G Suite Business, or G Suite for Education editions.

Use the regular Google Drive connection type to see the Team Drives besides My Drive and Shared with me.