Make Rclone more user friendly with a little effort

Feature
1

What problem are you are trying to solve?

Rclone is one of the most complex applications I have used on Linux during my seven-year journey. I was only able to get it working after two unsuccessful attempts because I did not have enough time to read all of the documentation required to mount a Google Drive.

As a Product Owner and UX designer, I see that users:

  1. Are often unaware that the Rclone Web GUI exists.
  2. Become frustrated when trying to configure mounts that start automatically at system startup.

This negatively affects user adoption, reduces engagement from the developer community, and results in weaker support from Linux distributions. Consequently, allocating resources to further Web GUI development may appear difficult to justify.

That said, perhaps the current approach is intended to encourage the use of third-party GUI solutions. However, I have not found any GUI that I would consider trustworthy enough to recommend.

How do you think Rclone should be changed to address these issues?

  1. Start the Web GUI automatically after installation.
  2. During the first launch, ask whether the user wants Rclone mounts to start automatically at login, similar to the approach described here: Systemd rclone mount · rclone/rclone Wiki · GitHub
  3. Create a desktop or application menu shortcut that launches the Web GUI.
  4. Save all user-created mounts under http://127.0.0.1:34397/mounts and provide a way to delete them. Templates for Google Drive, Dropbox, and S3 would be helpful, although not essential.
  5. Remove all of the above integrations when Rclone is uninstalled.

In short, this is not about creating something entirely new. Most of the required pieces already exist; the main challenge is bringing them together into a more cohesive user experience.

2

Hey, I’m the creator and maintainer of both the integrated WebUI and the separate native UI.

This is great feedback, and I appreciate you taking the time to write it out. Some of these requests can sound simple on the surface, but they often have more moving parts than expected. For example, rclone does not really have an uninstaller in the traditional sense. It is a self-contained binary, so it does not have the same install/uninstall flow as a typical Windows application.

If you have used Rclone UI, the native UI, and ran into issues, you have probably seen some of the complexity that comes with adding more functionality. That said, none of this is set in stone. Things are always evolving, and my goal, along with Nick and the rest of the team, is to provide the best experience possible for different kinds of users: veterans, beginners, older systems, unusual distros, macOS users, and everything in between.

To clarify the current approach: the integrated WebUI is intended to stay lightweight. It is an under-1MB web GUI bundled with rclone, but rclone is first and foremost a CLI tool. The WebUI is a useful bonus feature, not the main product. Many users, integrators, and scripters do not need a UI at all.

For users who want a richer graphical experience, the native UI, Rclone UI, is the better place for that. It can move faster, experiment more freely, and support features that would not necessarily make sense inside the core rclone binary.

This separation is useful because the CLI needs to remain stable, robust, and predictable, while the native UI can grow independently. Compared to many other CLI tools, rclone is already quite large, and it keeps growing. Feature creep and prioritization is something you're surely familiar with. For some environments and use cases, binary size matters a lot, so adding more features is not always an obvious win.

So the short version is: the feedback is valid, and I do understand where it is coming from. I can assure you that this won't fall on deaf ears because it's something I have discussed with Nick. As mentioned, there are more moving pieces and things to take into account than "extra feature = win"

The goal right now is to have a stable and bug-free WebUI, and a native UI that is good for 99% of people (both in terms of stability and also feature-wise).

Templates

This is an effort I've started a few months ago, you can see them right here: Templates | Rclone UI

They see decent usage (# of imports) without any forum thread or announcement. I get almost no submissions but that's to be expected.

I'd like to hear your feedback on those, maybe even add some new ones!

Just adding a provider (eg. Google) is usually not sufficient to have a useful template, and a lot of the flags deepend on the current system configuration, and the purpose of running the current operation.

These already deep-link to rclone:// for a future native integration, as well as compatibility with other third party clients.

3

welcome to the forum,

it sounds like you want to create something almost entirely new.

as for me, i would not want rclone to add any of those features.
rclone itself, needs to be what it currently is. a lean. mean, command line file copier.

most or all, of what you suggest involves low-level plumbing which would need to be replicated for every possible operating system that rclone currently supports.
and would require supporting all the different linux distributions and gnome and kde and ....

and on windows, there is no official installer, so you would need to support all the various install mentioned such as winget, chocolatey, scoop, and so on.

of course, rclone is open source, so you are free to write the code or sponsor its development.