Can rclone support global defaults with per-remote overrides?

Help and Support
1

Is there currently a supported way to define global/default flags that apply to all remotes, while still allowing specific remotes to override them?

Something conceptually like this:

Applies to all remotes

[global]
cache_dir = D:\rclone\cache
vfs_cache_mode = full
vfs_cache_max_age = 48h
vfs_cache_max_size = 100G
vfs_read_ahead = 256M
buffer_size = 64M
checkers = 32
contimeout = 60s
drive_chunk_size = 256M
dropbox_batch_mode = sync
dropbox_chunk_size = 128M
fast_list = true
low_level_retries = 10
multi_thread_streams = 8
retries = 3
s3_chunk_size = 64M
s3_upload_concurrency = 8
s3_max_upload_parts = 10000
timeout = 5m
transfers = 16

Override global S3 defaults for this remote only

[mega]
type = s3
provider = Mega
...
chunk_size = 16Mi
upload_concurrency = 12

Override only this setting for this remote

[remoteXX]
...
retries = 50000

The idea would be:

  • Global defaults automatically apply to all remotes.
  • Backend-specific globals (like s3_chunk_size) apply only to matching backend types.
  • Individual remotes can override specific values locally.
  • Reduce the need to repeat large sets of flags on every command or wrapper script.

From my testing, a literal [global] section does not seem to behave consistently for runtime flags such as vfs_cache_mode, transfers, etc., even though backend-native remote options work correctly.

Is there an officially supported mechanism for this kind of inheritance/config layering?

2

Have a look at docs. It should clarify what is and is not supported today:

3

Hey, thank you for replying, but I already read that, and it’s not quite what I’m looking for because I would still need to configure the same settings for each remote individually.

What I’m looking for is a way to define those settings in a single place so they apply to every remote by default, with the option to override them only in specific remotes when needed.