[HN Gopher] RSyncUI - A SwiftUI based macOS GUI for rsync
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       RSyncUI - A SwiftUI based macOS GUI for rsync
        
       Author : mickelsen
       Score  : 102 points
       Date   : 2025-05-29 05:05 UTC (17 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (github.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
        
       | AnonC wrote:
       | This seems quite useful to me. Since I use rsync for specific
       | purposes that tend to be used repeatedly (but not changing
       | environments/purposes), it always requires a little bit of
       | reading the manual and/or searching online plus some trial and
       | error to figure out the parameters (with a dry run).
       | 
       | BTW, the documentation [1] mentions installing a newer version of
       | rsync using Homebrew. I'd suggest including Macports rsync [2],
       | which also provides 3.x (right now at 3.4.1).
       | 
       | [1]: https://rsyncui.netlify.app/docs/settings/rsyncandpath/
       | 
       | [2]: https://ports.macports.org/port/rsync/
        
       | MortyWaves wrote:
       | Are there any good rsync GUIs for Windows?
        
         | tyingq wrote:
         | Rsync is pretty closely tied to unixy concepts of permissions,
         | paths, access times, etc. You can find some rsync based tools
         | for Windows, but IMO, it's a square peg / round hole unless
         | you're using it inside of WSL.
        
           | blue_pants wrote:
           | robocopy is the Windows equivalent of rsync
        
             | huhtenberg wrote:
             | Kinda, sorta. Robocopy is a very good tool, but it cannot
             | do incremental file updates. Already mentioned bvckup2 can
             | do deltas, but it's not an rsync client.
        
         | tomovo wrote:
         | I use Bvckup2 for doing Windows backups; it's commercial but
         | works really well for me.
        
         | encom wrote:
         | Windows has rsync?
        
           | MortyWaves wrote:
           | rsync is a library.
        
         | rzzzt wrote:
         | I used QtdSync for a while (in differential mode which uses
         | hardlinks on NTFS):
         | https://qtdtools.com/page.php?tool=0&sub=0&lang=en
         | 
         | At some point I forgot about the scheme and started
         | synchronizing things manually.
        
       | HeckFeck wrote:
       | Looks very good. I'm glad to see more things happening in SwiftUI
       | - proper desktop apps are not gone yet!
        
       | joshstrange wrote:
       | I'd love to see something similar for Rclone!
        
         | whalesalad wrote:
         | rclone is magical software
        
         | davidcollantes wrote:
         | Rclone comes with a web GUI now. See https://rclone.org/gui/.
         | Granted, not native, not as polished, but fairly functional.
        
       | mhw wrote:
       | A related tool that I've found useful over the years is Unison
       | [1]. Think of it as rsync where you can interactively adjust the
       | reconciliation algorithm between the two sides of the sync
       | connection. It stores a hash of the file contents from the
       | previous run for each file, so it can work out whether each side
       | has changed since the last run. It then presents you with a GUI
       | (or TUI) to review and adjust the reconciliation.
       | 
       | For the periods of my career where I've lived the two computer
       | life (desktop and laptop), I've used Unison to keep substantial
       | parts of my home directory in sync between the two machines.
       | 
       | [1]: https://github.com/bcpierce00/unison
        
       | Bender wrote:
       | Nice. It would be nifty if this could also front-end LFTP. Using
       | the mirror subsystem LFTP can replicate the behavior of rsync in
       | a chroot sftp-only environment which I use heavily when I do not
       | wish to give people a shell. If there was a UI it would be easier
       | to help less technical people to use LFTP.
        
       | nesarkvechnep wrote:
       | Is this your first SwiftUI app? The table and the sidebar have
       | weird padding and as someone primarily focused on front-end in
       | the past, it makes me uncomfortable. The sidebar can be a
       | NavigationStack, currently it doesn't look like it.
        
         | mickelsen wrote:
         | Not mine, just sharing what I found! Otherwise I'd have used
         | "Show HN".
        
       | dmarinus wrote:
       | I don't like GUIs for this so I made a simple cli frontend for
       | rsync/rclone so I can just run pull/push in a directory like git.
       | https://github.com/meeuw/rzn
        
       | lproven wrote:
       | My main Mac can't run Sonoma without OCLP and I'm perfectly happy
       | on Monterey for now, so I will skip.
       | 
       | I already have RSyncOSX, which after quite a bit of Googling and
       | digging seems to be an older app by the same author.
       | 
       | https://github.com/rsyncOSX/RsyncOSX_archived
       | 
       | As opposed to the new:
       | 
       | https://github.com/rsyncOSX/RsyncOSX
       | 
       | Before that, I used to use ARsync:
       | 
       | https://arrsync.sourceforge.net/
       | 
       | https://www.bartbusschots.ie/s/2006/11/26/arrsync-an-rsync-g...
       | 
       | It was, as I recall, nicer still but it's no longer maintained
       | and the x86-32 binary no longer runs.
        
       | w10-1 wrote:
       | Sorry, I noticed the XPC code is the generic to add numbers.
       | Unused?
       | 
       | And the application is not sandboxed?[1]
       | 
       | The trick with an app like this is the risk of launching an
       | external process, or building the app to include the binaries,
       | thus avoiding some security risk (and possibly using XPC for
       | inter-op updates).
       | 
       | Would you like to summarize how you identified and addressed the
       | risks, and your approach for building/bundling/deploying the app?
       | 
       | [1]
       | https://github.com/rsyncOSX/RsyncUI/blob/main/RsyncUI/RsyncU...
        
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       (page generated 2025-05-29 23:01 UTC)