Folders, previews, revisions, sharing, WebDAV and backups — in one Rust binary you run behind the HTTPS proxy you already trust. Desktop sync for Windows, macOS and Linux keeps a local folder in step.
Free & open source (MIT) · self-hosted · your files stay on hardware you control
ShellX Drive is for a person, a team or an organization that wants a capable drive without handing its storage to someone else. The server embeds its web app, keeps metadata in SQLite and file bodies in a local data directory, and listens on loopback by default.
Folders, previews, search, labels, stars, comments, folder sizes, trash, revision history and conflict copies. Batch actions and ZIP downloads for many files at once, and resumable uploads up to 2 GiB so a dropped connection doesn't mean starting over.
→ preview · restore a revision · undo from trashSeparate workspaces for each client, team or project, with owner, editor and viewer roles, invitations, groups and per-workspace policies.
Streaming backups, validation before you need them, restore, retention cleanup, storage usage and quotas — operated from the Admin Center, not from a wiki page of shell commands.
→ back up · validate · restoreLocal accounts with two-factor codes and recovery codes, revocable sessions, and a security history of browsers and addresses that signed in.
Nested WebDAV, an office-editor handoff, and a small Google Drive API subset for adapters — so existing tools have a way in.
A responsive web app and an installable PWA with mobile browsing, explicit mobile downloads, camera upload and notifications.
The same authenticated HTTP API powers the web app, the desktop clients, the tests and your automation. A bundled agent skill documents safe end-to-end operation.
opens in the browser — no download needed
Give accounts and groups Viewer or Editor access, or send a read-only guest link to someone who has no account at all. Every link carries its own rules, and you can take it back.
Install the desktop app, enter your server's HTTPS address and sign in. Choose a local base folder and up to 100 shared roots below it, and Drive keeps them in step — with conflict copies instead of silent overwrites. Disconnect this PC keeps your local files.
The Admin Center answers the operator's questions in plain language: is the service up, is the data ready, who did what, and when was the last good backup.
A drive holds things people care about, so the boundaries are written down instead of discovered later.
That is what makes previews, search, WebDAV, sharing and backups work. Drive is not end-to-end encrypted. If the host must never see a file, encrypt it on your machine before you upload it and store only the ciphertext.
There is no hosted sign-up. The server is a Linux x86-64 systemd
service that binds to 127.0.0.1:5758; HTTPS comes from
the reverse proxy or tunnel you already administer. Admins create
the accounts.
Production installs come from the signed artifacts on the GitHub
release, checked against SHA256SUMS. The release
workflow binds the package, checksums, SBOM, provenance and an
artifact attestation to the exact public source revision.
For production, install the signed release package and follow the first-install guide: it covers host checks, package verification, a hardened systemd service, your TLS proxy and the first administrator. To try it first, build from source and run it on loopback.
The release carries the Linux server package and the desktop apps for Windows, macOS and Linux, each with checksums and signatures. Verify the download, then follow the guide for your platform.