rclone

Apple publishes no API for a personal iCloud account, and there is no developer key you can request for your own Drive or Photos library. Blober signs in on Apple's own web page, captures the validated session, and presents the account as two roots.

Apple lists whatever other people shared with you inside iCloud Drive, as ordinary items with a shared label. Blober checks what each share lets you do.

Two details matter before a transfer. iCloud Drive delete is a move to Trash, the file is recoverable for 30 days and its storage is not freed until then. Photos has no folders, so there is no album browsing. Renaming a photo works, because its name is a field on the record behind it. Moving between the two iCloud accounts works too, Blober copies the file across and deletes the original.

You sign in on Apple's own page, never on a Blober form: click Open iCloud Login, enter your Apple ID, and complete two-factor authentication. When the login finishes, tick Keep me signed in before you submit it. The screen that follows asks you to trust the device: click Trust, so the session is long-lived. Wait for iCloud to finish loading, and Blober captures the validated session and closes the window. It never sees or stores your Apple ID password, and no app-specific password is needed. Advanced Data Protection is supported as long as Access iCloud Data on the Web is on; China (GCBD) accounts are not.

Writing to the Photos library is the part other tools leave out. rclone's iclouddrive backend can read the library, but its docs are explicit: "iCloud Photos is read-only. Upload, delete, rename, and move operations are not supported."^[1]

That makes Blober one of very few tools that can put new photos and videos into iCloud Photos, and the only one that does it from a desktop app rather than from Apple's own Photos.

What to expect when you upload:

• Images keep the capture date Blober sends, so an old library is not stamped with today's date.
• Videos use the creation date stored inside the file when it has one; Apple prefers the media's own metadata.
• Camera raw files such as dng, cr2, arw, nef, orf and raf are skipped because iCloud photos does not accept them
• A new item can take a few seconds to appear in the timeline.

iCloud works as a source and a destination, so it can sit on either side of a transfer with any other provider Blober supports: AWS S3, Azure Blob Storage, Backblaze B2, Wasabi, Cloudflare R2, Google Drive, Dropbox, OneDrive, Box, pCloud, Proton Drive, and GoPro Cloud.

Some transfers that come up often:

• GoPro Cloud to iCloud Drive. Pull the camera library out of GoPro and into Drive as ordinary files. Drive files do not join the Photos library, so send them to the iCloud Photos root instead if you want them in the Photos app.
• Google Photos to iCloud Photos. Move a whole Google library into Apple's timeline, with capture dates intact.
• Proton Drive to iCloud. Both are encrypted in transit to their own servers, and Blober decrypts Proton on the way out.
• iCloud to a NAS or a cheap bucket. Keep an offline copy of Drive and Photos in one run.

rclone can do several of these too, and it is free. Three of its limits shape the choice. Setting up the iCloud remote needs your Apple ID password and a 2FA code, and the trust token it leaves in the config is renewed every 30 days^[2]. Since March 31, 2025 rclone "can only download photos it uploaded," so a pre-existing Google Photos library needs the separate gphotosdl proxy, and its shared Google Photos client ID is being retired during 2026, which means creating your own Google Cloud app^[3]. Its Proton Drive backend is described as Beta, is built on a third-party bridge, covers Proton Drive files only, and generates no thumbnails^[4]. Blober covers both with no setup beyond the browser login.

rclone is a command line tool with config files and per-job flags: no desktop app, no saved workflows, no thumbnail generation. Blober stores each transfer as a workflow you can run again with one click. Our Blober vs rclone write-up goes through that in detail.

• No albums in Photos. The library is one timeline, so there is nothing to browse by album or folder. A photo can move between the two libraries, and a rename works in place.
• Drive delete is Trash. Space frees after 30 days, not immediately, delete manually if you want to clear the memory immediately
• Shared items are workable Other people's folders appear in Drive and can be browsed, and an item inside one renames, moves, and deletes when the share allows it.
• China (GCBD) accounts are not supported.
• Camera raw files are refused before upload to Photos. iCloud Drive takes them as ordinary files, but the Photos library refuses dng, cr2, arw, nef, orf and raf with a skip message. Apple's own upload page refuses them too ("This item's file type is not supported"), so convert raw files to JPEG or HEIC first if they need to be in the library.
• Sessions expire. Signing back in is one click, and transfers resume where they left off.

Does Blober need my Apple ID password? No. You sign in on Apple's own page, and Blober stores only the validated session cookies.

Can I upload to iCloud Photos with rclone? No. rclone's own docs state the iCloud Photos service is read-only, and that upload, delete, rename, and move are not supported^[5].

Will my photos land in the Photos app or in Drive? Whichever root you choose. The iCloud Photos root puts them in the Photos timeline. The iCloud Drive root keeps them as files that do not join the Photos library.

Does Advanced Data Protection break this? No, as long as Access iCloud Data on the Web is on in your Apple settings.

What happens if a video will not upload? Apple's transcoder refuses some media. Blober reports the item as skipped rather than retrying it on the fallback route, so the rest of the transfer keeps going.

• Blober vs rclone - where a desktop app fits next to a command line tool
• Transferring GoPro Footage to iCloud Drive on a Mac - what to expect from the iCloud Drive folder itself
• iCloud Drive and iCloud Photos Setup - the provider page

Blober connects to iCloud Drive, iCloud Photos, GoPro Cloud, Proton Drive, and the rest of its provider list in one desktop app. One-time purchase, no subscription, no per-GB fees.

Download Blober at blober.io

If rclone already moves your other clouds around, adding Proton Drive looks like the obvious next step. It is a real rclone backend, open source, and for scheduled jobs and mounts it does a genuinely good job. The catch only shows up when the job involves photos or videos.

You use rclone to backup a camera roll, then open Proton expecting the Photos tab to be full. The files are there, just not where or what you expected: a folder in My Files full of generic file icons, and nothing in the Photos timeline.

People describe it plainly:

Uploading images via rclone results in generic file icons instead of visual thumbnails inside the Proton Drive interface.

That line comes from a thread where a NAS owner set up rclone with Proton Drive and asked why nothing looked like a photo^[1]. It is not a Proton bug. It is what happens when a general file mover uploads into a service whose photo features depend on extra data the mover never sends.

Bot blober and rclone use Proton's own encryption, so privacy is identical either way. The difference is what survives the upload: thumbnails, capture dates, and which surface the media ends up on. For a photo library, those decide whether the result is usable.

Proton Drive is end to end encrypted, so Proton's servers never see the inside of your files. They cannot generate a preview from the original, because nothing is decrypted until it reaches your device.

That means the uploader has to make the thumbnails. Proton's own apps decode each image or video on your device, build the small preview images, encrypt them, and store them beside the original^[2]. Those extra blocks are what the interface renders as a tile or a preview.

rclone's Proton backend only speaks the file side of the API. It uploads the original and stops there, with no thumbnail blocks and no preview. On the rclone issue tracker this shows up as a known missing feature: the client would have to generate the preview and upload it for the file to display one^[3]. Proton then has nothing to render but a generic icon.

There is also no fix later. Proton Drive has no option to set or replace a thumbnail on a file that is already uploaded, and its servers cannot generate one after the fact. To get a preview you have to upload the file again with a client that sends thumbnails. So the tool you choose on day one decides what your library looks like from then on.

Blober uploads the same thumbnail data Proton's own clients do. Before an upload it decodes the media, produces Proton's standard preview sizes, and sends them alongside the original. Images and videos both show real previews in My Files, and photos get a proper tile in the Photos timeline. Audio gets the same care, and here Blober goes further than rclone could: a music file's embedded album art (the cover on an mp3 or m4a) is read straight off the file and uploaded as its thumbnail, so audio shows a real cover tile instead of a generic icon.

Proton Photos organizes the timeline by each photo's capture time. That value comes from the photo's EXIF data and is set when the file is uploaded. When it is missing, a photo has no real capture date, so it lands wherever upload time puts it.

The rclone backend documentation is direct about the underlying gap: the backend does not support updating modification times yet^[4]. rclone treats photos as files. Migrate a few years of pictures that way and you get a timeline that groups by upload date, not by when anything was taken.

Blober reads the EXIF capture time and hands it to Proton with the upload, and it carries over the file's own dates from the source. Photos group under the day they were actually taken.

Proton keeps two surfaces under one login: My Files, a folder tree, and Photos, a timeline with albums. Where a photo lands decides how you see it later.

rclone is a file backend, and it only ever sees the file side. Its remote maps to the My Files tree, and rclone forum threads describe trying to reach Proton's separate Photos area and failing, because that library sits outside the folder tree the backend exposes^[5]. Sync a camera roll this way and every picture lands in a folder, none of them appear in the Photos tab, and there is no album step to put them there.

Blober is built around the destination you choose. Pick the Photos surface and each upload becomes a timeline photo. Pick My Files and it is a regular file. Because Proton Photos is a flat timeline without folders, Blober automatically keeps the path rules you set sensible on either destination.

Most of the rclone column below comes from rclone's own Proton Drive documentation^[6].

That last row is the honest summary. rclone is the right tool when the job is moving files on a schedule or mounting Proton as a drive and you do not care about Proton's photo features. It is the wrong tool when the point of the move is getting a photo library to look right inside Proton.

If you are migrating a photo library, especially out of Google Photos, you want the uploader to behave like Proton's own client: generate previews, carry the capture dates, and put media where the Photos tab can show it. That is what Blober does.

If you are a terminal user syncing folders, running backups on a schedule, or mounting Proton on a server, rclone is a strong, established choice and you already know whether its tradeoffs matter to you.

For a photo library, that choice is the difference between files in a folder and a Photos tab that works the way Proton intends.

Why do my rclone-uploaded photos have no thumbnails in Proton Drive? Proton is end to end encrypted, so its servers cannot create previews; the uploading client has to. rclone's backend only moves files and sends no thumbnail data, so Proton shows a generic icon.

Can I add a thumbnail to a file I already uploaded with rclone? No. Proton Drive does not let you set or replace a thumbnail on an existing file, and its servers cannot generate one later. You would have to upload the file again with a client that produces thumbnails, which is what Blober does.

Does rclone upload into Proton Photos albums or the timeline? No. Its Proton backend works with files and folders in My Files only. Photos uploaded that way do not appear in the Photos timeline and are not added to albums.

Does Blober make thumbnails for audio files? Yes, and rclone cannot. Blober reads a music file's embedded album art (the cover on an mp3 or m4a) and uploads it as a Type1 thumbnail, so audio gets a real cover tile instead of a generic icon. rclone generates no thumbnails at all.

How stable is rclone's Proton Drive backend? It is a community backend. rclone ships it as Beta and Tier 4, Proton publishes no official API documentation, and rclone's own docs warn that Proton's protocol changes may leave some accounts incompatible.

For Proton Drive, is Blober better than rclone? For scripted file sync into folders, rclone is the established terminal option. For a photo library, where previews, capture dates, and the Photos timeline matter, Blober is the better fit because it uploads the thumbnail and metadata Proton needs. Both encrypt your data the same way.

• How to Move Google Photos to Proton Drive
• Proton Drive vs Proton Photos: What's the Difference?
• Proton Photos vs Google Photos
• Migrating To or From Proton Drive
• What Is Proton Drive? Features, Plans, and What It's Used For

Proton Drive is one of the most privacy-respecting cloud storage services you can pick. End-to-end PGP encryption, Swiss jurisdiction, open-source clients, and a zero-access architecture: not even Proton can read your files. Over 100 million accounts trust it^[1]. If privacy comes first, Proton Drive is a strong choice.

The catch is that Proton built sync clients, not transfer tools. The apps sync a folder between your device and Proton Drive, which works fine while Proton is your only cloud. The moment you want to pull files in from Google Drive, Dropbox, or S3, or move a Proton library out to cold storage, you are on your own. The official path is to download everything locally and re-upload it. That is fine for a few gigabytes. For 500 GB of photos spread across three Google accounts, it is a weekend you do not get back.

This guide runs through the pain points one by one, with sources, then shows what Blober does about each. It is also honest about when rclone is still the better tool.

Proton offers native clients on four platforms, plus web access:

Look at the last column. Across every platform, on every client, there is no built-in way to transfer files from another cloud into Proton Drive. You download to your machine first, then let the sync client pick the files up, which means you need enough free local storage to hold everything in transit.

If you are on Linux it is worse: there is no desktop client at all. You get the web interface, which works, but it does not support drag-and-drop bulk uploads from other services either.

Proton ships folder-sync apps for Windows and macOS, and photo backup on mobile. None of them can pull files from another cloud. If you want 200 GB of photos from Google Drive inside Proton Drive, the official path is: download everything to your machine, then let the sync client upload it. That needs free local disk equal to your whole library, and it sends every byte over the network twice.

The feature requests confirm the gap. Proton's own UserVoice has long-running requests for exactly this, including "Easy Switch for Google Photos" and a post titled "To switch from Google Photos, Proton drive is not the deal"^[2].

Proton's official "How to import from Google Photos into Proton Drive" guide^[3] is a Takeout pipeline: export from Google Takeout, wait for the email link, download the zips, unzip them, then import the folder in the web app or the Windows desktop app.

Three things make this painful:

1. It depends on Takeout. Google prepares the archive in the background, which "may take a while," and the download link expires after a week^[4].
2. The desktop import is Windows-only. The September 2025 announcement that "Google Photos import now supported on Drive for Windows" notes "Photo import support for macOS is coming soon"^[5]. On a Mac you are left with the web drag-and-drop path.
3. Takeout scatters albums. Proton's own guide warns: "Google Takeout splits large exports into multiple parts, but it may not keep photos from the same year in the same part. As a result, photos from the same time period may end up scattered across different folders"^[6]. Users then reorganize by year by hand to get clean albums.

rclone is the standard open-source answer, and its Proton Drive backend works, with caveats worth knowing before you trust a library to it. The rclone docs are explicit:

• The backend "is currently in Beta" and is rated Tier 4, rclone's lowest support tier^[7].
• Modification times are not preserved: "Proton Drive Bridge does not support updating modification times yet"^[8].
• Setup puts your password in a config file. Config asks for username, password, 2FA, and optionally your OTP secret and mailbox password^[9].
• The underlying library is honest about risk: "There are likely quite a few errors in this library, as there isn't official documentation available"^[10].
• Caching goes stale with concurrent clients: "if there are concurrent clients accessing the same mount point, then we might have a problem with caching the stale data"^[11].

As of 2026 Proton has no full-featured Linux desktop sync client. The June 2026 Proton Drive CLI announcement says a "full-featured desktop client with sync is on its way"^[12], and the engine-rebuild post confirms Proton is "actively building one of the community's most-requested features: the Proton Drive client for Linux"^[13]. Until then, Linux users get the CLI, which is not a drop-in replacement. Proton's own words: "only the applications include a full synchronization engine that runs in the background"^[14].

Proton removed its iOS Files (File Provider) integration and is rebuilding it. A June 2026 post by Proton's iOS lead explains the constraint: the extension runs in a sandboxed process capped at roughly 20 MB of memory, and Proton is reworking its SDK to fit. Proton says "we'd be surprised if this isn't resolved within the year"^[15]. In the meantime, iOS users cannot browse their whole Proton Drive from the Files app.

Proton Docs and Sheets are improving, but community feedback is candid. A top r/ProtonDrive post is titled "As Always Proton Sheet is Buggy and Proton Docs is slow to add feature!" and reports Sheets freezing on large datasets and missing document features like shapes^[16]. Other recent complaints include spreadsheet tab ordering reverting on reopen and no PDF export from Sheets. This matters if you are planning to move a heavy Google Workspace workflow over to Proton.

rclone is the canonical open-source tool for cloud storage. It supports 70+ backends and is genuinely excellent at what it does, and its Proton Drive backend works, with the caveats listed above. If you are already in the rclone ecosystem and those tradeoffs fit, rclone is a perfectly good option. Blober is a different style of tool for a different style of user, and the rest of this article is about that.

Blober takes a different approach: instead of asking for your credentials in a config file, it asks Proton for them.

When you connect Proton Drive in Blober, a browser window opens to Proton's own login page. You sign in with your email, password, and 2FA exactly as you would in any browser. There is no config file with credentials on disk, and nothing to type into a CLI. The provider guide covers how Proton Drive login works in Blober.

1. Transfer from any supported provider directly to Proton Drive. Google Drive, Dropbox, AWS S3, Azure Blob, Backblaze B2, Cloudflare R2, DigitalOcean Spaces, Wasabi, Rabata, GoPro Cloud, local disk. No intermediate downloads.
2. Transfer from Proton Drive to any other provider. Moving away from Proton, or shifting a subset to cold storage on Backblaze? Blober handles it.
3. Selective file transfer. Browse the source, pick exactly the files you want, transfer only those. Not a full sync of everything.
4. Saved workflows. Set up "Dropbox to Proton Drive" once and run it whenever you want. The workflow remembers source path, destination path, filters, and file naming templates.
5. Runs on Linux. Blober works on Windows, macOS, and Linux. Since Proton does not ship a Linux desktop client, Blober is one of the few ways to get a desktop-native Proton Drive experience on Linux without a browser.
6. Resumable transfers. If your session expires mid-transfer, Blober prompts you to sign in again and picks up where it left off. No files are lost or duplicated.

One detail matters for Google Photos specifically. Blober lists your library chronologically and keeps each photo's capture date, so a transfer lands in date-based folders. It does not recreate Google Photos albums as Proton albums, because Google provides no API for that kind of access. See How to Move Google Photos to Proton Drive.

Here is the situation Blober is built for.

You are on Google Drive or Dropbox, you have decided to move to Proton Drive for privacy, and you have 200 GB of documents and photos spread across folders. Today your options are:

Option A: Manual download and re-upload

1. Download 200 GB from Google Drive to your machine (hours, needs free disk space)
2. Wait for the Proton Drive sync client to upload it all (hours more; encryption is CPU-heavy)
3. Repeat for Dropbox
4. Hope nothing failed silently

Option B: Google Takeout plus manual upload

1. Request a Takeout archive (can take days)
2. Download the archive(s)
3. Extract, organize, upload to Proton Drive
4. Storage used: 3x (source cloud + local archive + Proton)

Option C: rclone

1. Run rclone config and set up your Google/Dropbox and Proton remotes
2. Provide your Proton credentials when prompted
3. Run rclone copy gdrive: protondrive: with the flags that fit your scenario
4. Drive everything from the CLI, including monitoring and restarts

Option D: Blober

1. Sign in to Google Drive (OAuth) or Dropbox (OAuth)
2. Sign in to Proton Drive (browser login)
3. Select the files you want
4. Start the transfer, then re-run the same workflow whenever you need to

A note on modification times, because rclone's Proton backend does not preserve them at all. Blober reads source timestamps for metadata and naming. If preserving exact modification times on Proton is a hard requirement for you, verify it on your own transfer before committing a large library.

Blober is a good fit if:

• You are migrating into Proton Drive from Google Drive, Dropbox, or another cloud
• You are moving out of Proton Drive, or shifting a subset to cold storage
• You are on Linux and want a desktop-native way to manage Proton Drive files
• You would rather log in through a browser than configure credentials in a file
• You want a repeatable, named workflow you can re-run later

rclone is a good fit if:

• You are already in the rclone ecosystem and want one tool for everything
• You need scriptable, cron-based automation
• You want to mount Proton Drive as a filesystem (FUSE)
• You prefer CLI control over a GUI

Is rclone safe to use with Proton Drive? It works, but treat it as experimental. rclone rates the backend Tier 4, calls it "in Beta," and notes the bridge library "likely" has errors^[17]. Modification times are not preserved, and setup stores your Proton password and 2FA secret in the rclone config file.

Why can't I import Google Photos to Proton Drive on my Mac? Proton's Google Photos import is Windows-only as of 2026; the announcement says macOS support "is coming soon"^[18]. On macOS you are limited to the web drag-and-drop path, which still needs a Takeout export first.

Does Proton Drive work on Linux? Partially. Proton ships a CLI for Linux and is building a full desktop client^[19]. There is no official GUI sync client for Linux today. Blober runs natively on Linux and provides one.

Does Blober store my Proton password? No. Blober opens Proton's own login page in a browser window. You sign in there, exactly as you would on drive.proton.me, and your password never passes through Blober.

Is Blober a sync tool? No. Blober is a transfer tool. It moves a selected set of files from one provider to another and stops. Nothing runs in the background and overwrites files, unlike a sync client.

Where do my Google Photos land when I move them with Blober? In Proton Drive's folder tree, organized by each photo's capture date. Blober lists Google Photos chronologically and does not recreate Google Photos albums. If you want the Proton Photos timeline and album view instead, Proton's official Google Photos import (Windows-only) is the supported route, and it sorts imported photos into albums from the folder structure. See How to Move Google Photos to Proton Drive.

• What Is Proton Drive? Features, Plans, and What It's Used For
• How to Move Google Photos to Proton Drive
• Proton Drive vs Proton Photos: What's the Difference?
• Server-to-Server vs Download-and-Reupload

Move a Proton Drive library in or out without filling your disk. Blober signs you into Proton through Proton's own login page, then transfers to or from 20+ providers with parallel, resumable transfers. Runs on Windows, macOS, and Linux.

Download Blober at blober.io

RcloneView and Blober are both desktop apps that move files between cloud storage providers and your own drives without routing data through a middleman server. That is where the similarity ends.

RcloneView is a GUI over rclone, made by Bdrive, the company behind NetDrive^[1]. It wraps rclone's command line in a visual file manager, so it inherits rclone's strengths (70+ providers, client-side encryption, cloud mounting)^[2] and its limits (whatever rclone cannot do, RcloneView cannot do either).

Blober is a purpose-built transfer app with a one-time license, saved workflows, resumable task history, and two capabilities no rclone-based tool has: native GoPro Cloud support and full Google Photos downloads.

For everyday transfers between mainstream providers, both tools cover the same ground:

• Desktop GUI, no terminal required
• Cloud-to-cloud and cloud-to-local transfers that run on your machine
• Local credential control, with no SaaS dashboard holding your tokens
• Drag-and-drop, job tracking, and transfer monitoring

If you only move files between Google Drive, Dropbox, and an S3 bucket, either app will do the job. The decision comes down to provider coverage, pricing model, and the edge cases below.

rclone has no GoPro Cloud backend, so RcloneView cannot connect to GoPro Cloud either. If you shoot with a GoPro and want to move your media from GoPro Cloud to Backblaze B2, AWS S3, Wasabi, or a local NAS, neither rclone nor RcloneView can help.

Blober is the only transfer tool with native GoPro Cloud integration. That makes it the choice for photographers, videographers, and agencies that manage GoPro media libraries.

RcloneView lists Google Photos among its providers, but it relies on rclone's Google Photos backend. That backend carries real limits, documented by rclone^[3]:

• Since March 31, 2025, rclone can only download photos it uploaded itself. Your pre-existing Google Photos library is off limits.
• rclone's shared Google Photos client ID is being retired during 2026, so users must create and maintain their own Google Cloud app to keep it working.
• Downloading full-resolution originals requires a separate headless-browser proxy tool.

Blober connects directly to Google Photos and downloads your entire library at original quality, no Takeout export required. For anyone moving years of photos out of Google Photos, this is the deciding factor.

This is where the two differ most in daily use. RcloneView saves jobs, a real improvement over raw rclone, and by default it keeps running in the system tray when you close its window, so transfers continue in the background.

Blober has jobs and tasks too, but it also saves the whole transfer as a reusable workflow: source, destination, filters, and path templates, all in one configuration you rerun with a single click. Rerun it any time. An interrupted transfer resumes from stored state, skipping files it already finished, instead of starting over. Blober also keeps the operating system from sleeping while the app runs, so a long transfer is not cut off when the machine would otherwise doze off.

For long-running moves over unreliable connections, or media archives with tens of thousands of files, that is the difference between babysitting a transfer and walking away.

Blober can organize files as it copies them. Path templates build the destination folder from file metadata: created date, file name, size, or extension. A year of camera uploads can land in /2026/08/GOPRxxxx.mp4 automatically, instead of one flat folder.

RcloneView writes to the folder you choose, and building that structure means scripting it yourself in every job.

To be fair, RcloneView wins in several areas. Choose it if you:

• Need a provider Blober has not shipped yet (rclone covers 70+)
• Want to mount cloud storage as a local drive
• Want transfers to keep running in the system tray after you close the window
• Need two-way sync, scheduling, or a mobile photo backup app
• Prefer a free tool for occasional transfers
• Already rely on rclone configs, daemons, or the rclone ecosystem

Is RcloneView just a GUI for rclone?

Yes. RcloneView is a GUI front-end built around rclone, so it inherits what rclone supports and what it lacks^[4]. It can mount cloud storage and apply rclone's encryption, but it cannot add providers rclone has no backend for, such as GoPro Cloud.

Can RcloneView download my Google Photos?

Only photos rclone uploaded itself. Since March 31, 2025, rclone's Google Photos backend cannot download media it did not upload, so a pre-existing library is out of reach without Google Takeout. Blober connects directly to Google Photos and downloads the whole library at original quality.

Is RcloneView free?

RcloneView is freemium. The free tier covers browsing, transfers, mounting, and encryption, and a paid subscription unlocks scheduling, mobile backup, and multi-window support^[5]. Blober is a one-time purchase with no subscription.

Does RcloneView keep running when I close the window?

Yes. Closing the window hides RcloneView to the system tray and transfers keep running in the background. Blober handles that differently: instead of hiding in the tray, it keeps the operating system from sleeping while the app runs and resumes an interrupted transfer from stored state.

Can either tool move GoPro Cloud footage?

No rclone-based tool can, because rclone has no GoPro Cloud backend. Blober is the only transfer tool with native GoPro Cloud integration.

What is a Blober workflow?

A workflow is the whole transfer saved as one reusable configuration: source, destination, filters, and path templates. Rerun it with one click, reuse it after an interruption, and pick up from stored state.

Choose Blober if you:

• Need GoPro Cloud support (only Blober has it)
• Want to download your full Google Photos library without Takeout
• Transfer large volumes on a one-time license, not a recurring subscription
• Value resumable workflows and metadata-based organization
• Care about data sovereignty, with no third-party servers touching your files

For a closer look at the same tradeoffs against the raw CLI, read Blober vs rclone.

Download Blober at blober.io

Three tools dominate cloud data transfer in 2026 - each solving the problem from a completely different angle. Here's how they compare.

Flexify charges per GiB transferred plus cloud provider egress fees. Costs add up fast for recurring workflows. rclone is free but demands engineering time. Blober sits in the sweet spot: pay once, transfer forever.

For regulated industries, sensitive media archives, or personal data - avoiding third-party intermediaries is not a preference, it is a requirement. Both Blober and rclone keep your data path clean. Flexify introduces a managed middleman.

Blober is the only transfer tool that supports GoPro Cloud. Neither Flexify nor rclone can access GoPro's storage. If you manage GoPro footage - whether as a creator, agency, or production house - Blober is the only option for migrating that media to professional storage like Backblaze B2, AWS S3, or your local NAS.

• rclone is the most powerful tool if you are deeply technical, automation-driven, and comfortable with terminal workflows. It is free and supports 70+ providers.
• Flexify.io is ideal for enterprises running massive one-time migrations under strict SLAs, especially when virtual S3 endpoints or managed infrastructure are required. Budget accordingly - costs scale with data volume.
• Blober fills the gap between them: professional-grade transfers with a native desktop GUI, local credential control, visual workflows, predictable one-time pricing, and exclusive GoPro Cloud support.

Blober's beta pricing locks in a lifetime license at a fraction of the cost competitors charge for a single large migration. For users who value simplicity, sovereignty, and long-term savings - Blober is the clear choice.

rclone is the industry-standard CLI tool for cloud storage automation among developers and sysadmins. It is extremely powerful, supports over 70 storage providers, and is completely free and open-source. Its tradeoff is complexity - every job requires flags, config files, and terminal expertise.

Blober is built for users who want rclone-level capability without managing flags, scripts, or terminal state. It replaces stateless CLI execution with persistent, visual workflows that anyone can set up and repeat.

rclone

• Command-line only (experimental web GUI exists, but limited)
• Configuration files and flags - every job requires manual setup
• Excellent for scripting and cron-based automation
• Steep learning curve for non-technical users
• No built-in workflow persistence - you must manage your own scripts

Blober

• Native desktop GUI (Windows, macOS, Linux)
• Visual setup of sources, destinations, and filters
• Saved workflows with one-click execution
• Built-in task history with resumable state
• Designed for repeatability and clarity - no terminal required

rclone supports over 70 providers - but GoPro Cloud is not one of them. If you shoot with GoPro cameras and want to move your media from GoPro's cloud to Backblaze B2, AWS S3, Wasabi, or your local NAS, rclone simply cannot help.

Blober is the only transfer tool with native GoPro Cloud integration, making it the obvious choice for photographers, videographers, action sports creators, and agencies managing GoPro media libraries.

rclone requires upfront configuration, careful flag selection, and scripting discipline to safely repeat jobs:

rclone copy remote:bucket/path dest:bucket/path \
  --transfers 4 --checkers 8 --retries 3 \
  --filter-from filters.txt --log-file transfer.log

Forget a flag? Change a path? The job silently behaves differently. There is no built-in history of what ran, when, or whether it succeeded.

Blober stores each workflow as a durable configuration with immutable execution history. If a transfer is interrupted, Blober resumes based on stored state rather than re-running a stateless command.

This difference becomes critical for:

• Long-running transfers over unreliable connections
• Media archives with thousands of files
• Users who run transfers infrequently and forget the exact flags
• Teams where multiple people need to trigger the same workflow

Both rclone and Blober are local-first tools - your credentials stay on your machine. This is a shared advantage over SaaS competitors like Flexify and MultCloud where credentials and potentially data flow through third-party servers.

Where Blober adds value over rclone:

• No terminal exposure - credentials are managed in a secured desktop app, not plaintext config files
• Encrypted credential storage - not a ~/.config/rclone/rclone.conf file on disk
• Visual audit trail - every transfer logged with timestamps, file counts, and status

rclone being free is a genuine advantage. Blober earns its price by saving time, reducing errors, and opening cloud transfers to users who would never touch a terminal.

Choose Blober if you:

• Prefer visual tools over terminal commands
• Want repeatable workflows without writing scripts
• Need GoPro Cloud support (only Blober has it)
• Need clarity, task history, and one-click resumption
• Transfer data occasionally but need it to work reliably every time
• Value convenience and productivity over maximum flexibility
• Want credentials stored securely - not in a plaintext config file

Download Blober at blober.io