Driftless is a self-hosted file sync engine: run one Docker container on a home server or NAS, and your files stay in sync across your devices — without a subscription and without handing your data to someone else's cloud. Existing tools ask you to become a sysadmin. Driftless keeps the server deliberately tiny and lets the clients do the work.
Your files, on your own hardware, everywhere you need them.
Set up in minutes
Start the container, open the web admin, create your admin account and add users. That's the whole setup: no file browser to configure, no plugins, no settings sprawl. Each user gets their own private space, and the clients decide what to sync and what stays on the device.
How it syncs
- Only what changed — files are split into content-defined chunks, so editing a large file uploads just the changed parts.
- Real-time — the server pushes changes to your other devices the moment they land.
- No silent overwrites — when two devices edit the same file, Driftless keeps both versions and lets you pick the one to keep.
- Version history — keep up to N previous versions of every file; old ones are pruned automatically.
- Grows with your storage — add extra drives as storage locations, and move data off a drive before you retire it.
Platforms
- Server — a single Docker container with the web admin built in. SQLite by default, so no database to run.
- macOS — a menu-bar app with Finder integration: files appear in Finder, download on demand, and can be pinned to stay offline or freed up to save space. Sync any extra folders on your Mac too.
- Command line — a
driftlessclient for one-shot or continuous sync on any machine. - Coming next — Android and iOS with automatic, hands-off photo backup, followed by Windows.
Private by design
Every user's data is stored and accounted for separately, sign-ins are throttled and sessions expire, and remote access works over Tailscale without opening ports to the internet. Driftless is open source under the AGPL v3.