FAQ


In order to use S3Drive you need to install the app on your mobile, desktop or use web client.

You can then choose to store data with us or connect to a storage provider of your choice, S3Drive supports pretty much anything, from S3 clouds (AWS, Backblaze, Wasabi etc.) to major providers (Google Drive, Dropbox, OneDrive, Proton Drive etc.) and even custom protocols (WebDAV, SFTP, SMB, FTP etc.).
You can combine all these into one storage experience using `union` or `combine` commands.

If you have trouble setting it up, don't worry. Please visit our Support channel, so we or our community can assist you.


S3Drive is a self-contained smart software which is 100% compatible with the open and broadly supported S3 protocol and Rclone library.
There is no server or middle-man. That means that we're providing you our engineering feats as an installable app and you receive the full freedom where you want to connect and store your data.

We've dedicated enormous amount of effort in order for S3Drive to be a complete secure and cross-compatible solution working directly from your desktop, mobile or web. There are multiple challenges that we've had to solve. Since files are encrypted we can't easily scan your data in order to perform deduplication and/or generate thumbnails, efficient server-side search wasn't possible either, so we've had to reimplement all that with the Zero Knowledge protocol in mind.

Why don't you install our client, have a go and let us know if you need any help?


We're providing a privacy friendly file management tools available for anyone regardless of their financial status. We truly believe that privacy is one of the crucial human rights and everyone deserves to have it. We are already providing a generous package for free which is subsidized by users who decided to support us by choosing our paid offerings.
Staying compliant with S3 and other protocols is not a trivial task, however by doing so we can provide a solution which is open, compatible with multiple providers and without a vendor lock-in. Since most protocols weren't designed with E2E encryption in mind, we've combined it with Rclone crypt and provide it to you as a convenient package with a modern UI and seamless user experience.

We've excluded advertisement from our business model, so you can be sure we'll never sell your data... and with our operational model we have very limited abilities to gather any data about you anyway.

Our short-term plan is to further improve S3Drive (roadmap) and make it as seamless to use as if encryption wasn't there. Long-term plans include collaboration tools, support for different clouds, improved background processing and encrypted email.


In order to protect your privacy you need to enable E2E encryption which is entirely free and based on an open encryption protocol introduced by Rclone.
Once you enable encryption your files are securely encrypted before leaving your device and your storage provider has no technical ability to know what's inside of your file.
Additionally, once you enable filename encryption your storage provider wouldn't be able to deduct what's inside based on the file or directory names as well.

Even if encryption is enabled, your storage provider might still log some of your actions associated with your IP address and approximate location. In such case you can use S3Drive together with a VPN or you may decide to host your own storage on a VPS, rent a dedicated server or connect to home NAS. You don't need to set it up all from start though, but only if you're ready.

Please be aware that after enabling the encryption you need to backup your encryption passphrase, so you can access your files in an emergency or on a different device.


Server-side encryption alone isn't sufficient factor to protect your privacy, however in most cases it takes one click to enable it, it's free and doesn't come with any performance penalty for you as a customer... so the answer is YES. Don't forget to enable the S3Drive's client-side encryption though, as this is the decisive factor in protecting your privacy... and hey it's free.


Your encrypted data is secured by the XSalsa20, the same symmetric cipher used in very popular Rclone's crypt. XSalsa20 cipher is Quantum-Resistant, as it is the case with other members of symmetric ciphers family. Same applies for HMAC-SHA256 cipher that we use for content sharing.
We will apply improvements, for instance key length increase or even cipher change if there is a justified risk and consensus across researchers and scientists.
We're constantly monitoring breakthroughs in cryptography and will apply necessary measures to mitigate the risks.

If you have any comments on this please reach out to us at: Support or Feedback.


Currently S3Drive isn't open source. Whilst we'd love to open-source our clients, given our design we would find it hard to maintain current development tempo and finance project maintenance. Our principles are based on a compatibility with an open S3 protocol, our encryption scheme is free and open-source. We're not forcing you to use our client and we're providing a guide how to setup Rclone, so you can conveniently import/export your data.

Don't get us wrong, open source is great, we love it, use and contribute ourselves.
Unfortunately the inherent flaw of open-source is funding. We all have families to feed and let me quote our Discord user: "GitHub stars don't pay the rent."
As a tech-founder, I would love to work on an open-source initiatives full-time. The reality is that one needs to spend lots of time asking for money instead of building stuff. Our current model allows us to fund costly development process, where we deliver major updates every couple weeks.

You can say that there are couple other solutions which are open-source and somehow manage to run a successful businesses and ... it's true. There is the other side of the story though. Most of these businesses have one thing in common, in order to bring profit they've usually had to lock you in into their closed-source back-end and proprietary protocols. Perhaps nothing wrong with that, but be aware that should they decide to wind down operations, you're left with an open-source puzzle which no longer fits into anything. We prefer to keep the whole ecosystem open, which comes with its own unique challenges - we need to work harder in the area of verifiability, auditability and trust. Open-source doesn't guarantee these either, but it is a tool which makes them easier to achieve, plus OSS gets free marketing that we don't.

Nothing is definite though and things are likely to change in the future. We understand importance of open-source in a privacy domain. We're actively exploring different operation and financing models. At the very minimum we plan to give guarantees that if we were ever (very unlikely) to discontinue the project, we would release our work to public domain under one of the open-source license be it GPLv3 or MIT.
Recently we've came across on some non-standard open-source alternatives, e.g.: n8n, BSL or faircode which aren't considered FOSS, but might be a fair compromise between S3Drive community needs and business viability.

Recently we've started to consider Open Source release trigger where we would obligated to release the source once we've met clearly defined business goal revolving around transforming our business from license to service oriented (managed storage plans). We're aware that once we release the source, our license revenue would certainly drop to unsustainable levels.

We would love to hear your thoughts. Do you have an idea how we can get closer towards open-source? Please contact us at: Support or Feedback.


If you buy a license on our website it does allow you to run S3Drive on all your devices on all platforms.

If you buy a license using an in-app purchase it will be available only on that specific platform.

If you have already purchased an in-app license and would like to use all platforms you'll need to buy another license.
We are able to reduce the price of your new license based on your previous purchase minus applicable platform fees.


Storage packages that we sell are stackable. If you need more, simply subscribe to additional plan. For higher capacity storage plans or non-standard use, please contact us to get an individual offer. Alternatively you can buy storage from external provider and use S3Drive to connect.


On 13th Nov 2024 we've had to release S3Drive under new ID on App Store.

Whilst technically nothing has changed, we weren't able to auto-migrate your in-app purchases.
Don't worry though, we will promptly enable all your purchases on new App ID as long as you contact our support and provide proof of purchase.

This breaking change was forced on us by technical limitation of Apple Universal Purchase.
Believe us or not, we're also negatively affected by this change - we've lost all of the valuable positive reviews from you.

We're sorry for this inconvenience.
We hope we can make this up for you delivering exciting features over the next few months and upcoming years.

Thank you for understanding!


This error is related to AppImage format requirement. On Ubuntu/Debian please use:
sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install -y libfuse2


For media play-out we require libmpv2 or libmpv1 library.

For Ubuntu 23.04+:
sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install -y libmpv2

For Ubuntu 22.04 or older use:
sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install -y libmpv1

Additionally (for .deb release) you may need to create a symlink e.g.:
sudo ln -s /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libmpv.so.2.2.0 /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libmpv.so.1


Application relies on Visual C++ Redistributable which isn't always available.
Please download and install this package directly from Microsoft website.

This shall resolve below error:
The code execution cannot proceed because MSVCP140.dll was not found.
VCRUNTIME140.dll, VCRUNTIME140_1.dll


Something doesn't work as intended? Did you find a bug? Don't give up. Please visit our Support channel or drop us a comment

We will be able to respond to your issue quickly or even address it on the fly.

We try our best to stay compatible with every storage provider. Unfortunately each provider has slightly different protocol implementations with its own quirks and incompatibilities that we need to workaround.

Given that we're extremely careful about the data within our error reporting we often don't even know that you experience an issue.
Your report really means a lot and helps us to improve the ecosystem.

Stay secure and encrypted,
S3Drive team