Zm44

Show HN: Stop paying for Dropbox/Google Drive, use your own S3 bucket instead

Last week SWYX nerd-sniped me into building an Open-source Dropbox.

Here is Locker: the ultimate open-source Google Drive/box/Dropbox alternative
- Provider agnostic (S3, R2, vercel blob, local)
- BYOB (Bring your own bucket)
- Virtual file system
- QMD Search plugin

https://locker.dev

Locker | Open-Source File Storage Platform

Self-hostable file storage. Upload, organize, and share files from your own infrastructure.

Apr 7 at 11:12amWeb
Show threaddewey1d ago

The selling point of Dropbox/Google Drive isn't the storage itself, but that there's app for mobile and desktop operating systems which deeply integrates it in the OS so it's just like a local folder that's magically synced.

So it's a cool project, but not really what I'd say is a Dropbox replacement.

Show threadTepix1d ago
On the other hand when a Dropbox user shares a file with you these days, the nudges have so gotten out of hand that it's a pain to use.
Show threadCAmosisKilduff1d ago
Isn't that the scenario for Nextcloud?
Show threadajsnigrutin1d ago

https://syncthing.net/ <- like this :)

Free, opensource, works on computers and phones, can in most cases puncture nat, supports local discovery (lan, multicast).

No googles, no dropboxes, no clouds, no AI training, no "my kid likes the wrong video on youtube, now our whole family lost access to every google account we had, so we lost everything, including family photos", just sync!

(not affiliated, just really love the software)

Syncthing

Show threadmleo1d ago
This is my go to solution for code sync across macOS laptop, Windows VMs, and Linux VMs to build and run/debug across environments. Unless something has changed, exclusions of build artifacts was always an issue with cloud sync providers.
I have been doing more cross compilation on macOS, copy and run on those other machines lately for prototypes, but for IDE based debugging it’s great to edit local or remote and get it all synced to the machine to run it in seconds.
Show threadthrowaway54651d ago
We can just all use rsync, no need for an app.
Show threadnickjj1d ago

Yep, I use rsync to sync files / directories between my desktop, laptop and even phone (Android). Also an external drive.

I ended up creating https://github.com/nickjj/bmsu which calls rsync under the hood but helps you build up a valid rsync command with no surprises. It also codifies each of you backup / restore strategies so you're not having to run massively long rsync commands each time.

Nothing leaves my local network since it's all local file transfers.

Show threadbitexploder1d ago
Until I want to share with say… anyone that isn’t on HN :)
Show threaddangus1d ago
To me, integration with the Apple files app on iOS is critical for any Dropbox replacement (among other things).
Show threadfilleokus1d ago

Neat! Pricing wise it might not always make sense though to use the commercial blob storages, especially for solo usage.

1 TB is roughly 20-30 USD per month at AWS/GCP only in storage, plus traffic and operations. R2 is slightly cheaper and includes traffic.

Compared to e.g a Google AI plan where you get 5 TB storage for the same price (25 USD/month) + Gemini Pro thrown in.

Show threadkristianc1d ago

We've officially come full circle

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224

I have a few qualms with this app: 1. For a Linux user, you can already build su... | Hacker News

Show threadryangittins1d ago

Hah, wow. A post with an ID under 10k. Meanwhile this one is over 47M.

I didn't realize I've been reading HN nearly its whole existence. For all my complaining about what's happened to the internet since those days, HN has managed to stay high quality without compromising.

Show threadbitexploder1d ago
At least, here the biases are well known. I have been here since the beginning as well. :)
Show threadgiarc1d ago
I think a big reason is you are not notified when someone replies to your comment. It reduces heated back and forth arguments.
Show threadPunchyHamster1d ago
this is cloud to different cloud thing not physical to cloud thing tho
Show threadbitexploder1d ago
Every so often someone is like, Dropbox isn’t that hard. Look at this amazing ZFS/whatever! So simple. Yeah, I keep paying Dropbox every year so I don’t have to think about it. I shoot a sync off to backblaze every once in a while.
Show threadfreedomben1d ago
at the risk of a comment that doesn't age well, for most people on HN I would definitely look into just using rclone. I also has a GUI for people who want that. rclone is mind-blowingly good. You can set up client-side encryption (so object storage never sees the data or even the filename) to be seamless. I'm a huge fan
Show threadrkagerer1d ago

Why would I want to replace my reliance on them with reliance on Amazon or another cloud provider?

I'd rather control the whole stack, even if it means deploying my own hardware to one or more redundant, off-site locations.

Edit: Are there robust, open source, self-hosted, S3-compliant engines out there reliable and performant enough to be the backend for this?

Show threadovaistariq1d ago
The critical part of Dropbox is not just the storage layer but a combination of their client and server. Even small things like how do you handle conflicting writes to the same file from multiple threads, matter a great deal for data consistency and durability.
Show threaddangus1d ago

A lot of the backend bucket providers can handle file versioning.

I too would like the answer to this concern because the features page doesn’t mention it. I want to be able to handle file version history.

I’m currently using Filen which I find very reasonable and, critically, it has a Linux client. But I wish it was faster and I wish the local file explorer integration was more like Dropbox where it is seamless to the OS rather than the current setup where you mount a network share.