When I first started using Rclone, I focused mainly on basic copy and sync operations. Over time, I discovered commands and flags that dramatically improved performance, reliability, and troubleshooting.
Some of the most valuable features weren't the ones I learned first.
What's the most useful Rclone command, flag, or workflow you've discovered, and why?
The boring-but-useful one is rclone check after a copy/sync, especially with --one-way when the destination is supposed to be only a mirror. It catches the cases where the transfer looked fine but a few files were skipped or differ. For bigger jobs I also add a log file from the start, because debugging after the terminal scrollback is gone is no fun.
For backup jobs, the one I use most is still --dry-run before a real sync. It sounds boring, but it has saved me from pushing a wrong path or deleting more than expected. For checking later, --combined with check is handy too, because it gives a compact list of what differs instead of making me scroll through a lot of output.
The command I like the best is rclone ncdu. I am biased here of course - I wrote rclone ncdu but it gives me joy every time I use it to clean up either local or cloud storage.