Cyberduck
Cyberduck is an all purpose file explorer for remote files. That includes protocols for FTP, SFTP, Amazon S3, WebDAV, Microsoft Azure and OneDrive, Google Drive, and Dropbox. Best of all, Cyberduck is free to download and use. They do accept donations, however. Cyberduck has grown quite a bit in the last few years. Once, it was only available for Mac, and it started out as a simple FTP app. Today it has expanded to include emerging cloud storage standards and can work with major services such as Google Drive and Amazon S3.
- Connect to FTP, SFTP, WebDAV, Amazon S3, Google Cloud Storage, Rackspace Cloud, Backblaze B2, Google Drive, Dropbox, and more.
- Cryptomator” client side encryption
- Integrated with external editors makes editing documents easy.
- Simple browser architecture
- Donationware
- User friendly
- Centralizes access to all of your remote storage
- Very fast transfer speed
- Drag and drop upload and download
- Supports a number of protocols
- Lacks direct file sharing capability
- Only available on Mac and Windows (no support for mobile devices)
One of the issues most folks will have with free software is that it tends to be under-documented. In other words, getting the hang of how to use it can require a good amount of fiddling. I’m happy to report that Cyberduck does not require a very steep learning curve. In order to test it out, I wanted to connect my Google Drive to the interface. Cyberduck operates around a bookmark style explorer. That is, in order to connect your services to Cyberduck’s explorer, you create a bookmark for that purpose. You have to go under bookmarks, look for the service you want to connect, and the wizard from there makes it rather easy. Cyberduck must gain permission to access the service, and you’re good to go from there. The major upside of Cyberduck is that you don’t have to run it in a browser in order to access your files, nor are you required to login each time you want to check them out. Cyberduck centralizes access to all your remote storage, is easy to use, and won’t cost you a dime.