RSyncUI – A SwiftUI based macOS GUI for rsync

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

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It was, as I recall, nicer still but it's no longer maintained and the x86-32 binary no longer runs.

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/

Looks very good. I'm glad to see more things happening in SwiftUI - proper desktop apps are not gone yet!

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

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...

Not to detract from the author's efforts, but Transmit[1] has a feature that lets you synchronise two folders (as well as being a great all-round SFTP/remote file browser).

[1] https://help.panic.com/transmit/transmit5/synchronize/

There was a discussion recently about macOS Serious changing the default implementation of rsync to OpenRsync.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43605003

I posted a comment regarding Mike Bombich's "Carbon Copy Cloner", which at least started as a GUI wrapper around an rsync that's been patched to handle Mac extended attributes and related features that date from the Classic MacOS era.

Carbon Copy Cloner is commercial software, but Bombich released his patches to rsync as open source.

My comment has some links to historical context of his work.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43606281

Maybe of interest here.

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.

I’d love to see something similar for Rclone!

Are there any good rsync GUIs for Windows?

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.