Hello! How are folks self-hosting online storage, similar to Google Drive?
Some options I’ve found:
- https://filebrowser.org/ (maintenance-only mode)
- https://www.seafile.com/en/home/ (weird disk layout scares me)
- https://tinyfilemanager.github.io/ (i like simple!)
- https://github.com/mickael-kerjean/filestash
A bunch more: https://github.com/awesome-selfhosted/awesome-selfhosted?tab=readme-ov-file#file-transfer---web-based-file-managers
I mainly just need basic file management features. I don’t plan to share files outside of my tailscale VPN. I do need to support multiple users though.
I’m not considering Nextcloud because that seems too big. I’m also not considering syncthing for this project because I don’t want copies on multiple devices.
I’m currently just using ssh+nautilus and that’s worked great for just me, but something similar to Google Drive would be easier to onboard my family.
Nextcloud, despite you’re not considering it. You can disable or not install the apps you don’t need, like Calendar, Contacts, Photos, Dashboard, Activity, etc.
There’s also a fork of Filebrowser, called Filebrowser Quantum, which I’ve been interested in, though haven’t tried yet: https://github.com/gtsteffaniak/filebrowser
I’ve been trying Peergos lately, and I’m pretty happy with it so far.
Google’s nagging offers for free trials of Gemini made me realize that I was basically handing data over to an AI company 🤦🏻♂️ So I’ve been looking for an alternative too
FileBrowser has a fork under development: https://github.com/gtsteffaniak/filebrowser
I currently use copyparty. It’s not the prettiest, but it’s fast and the documentation on GitHub is extensive. The maintainer is also very friendly and helpful.
Self hosting backups for anything remotely critical is usually a terrible terrible idea. Carry on.
