I've played around with many self-hosted file manager apps. My first one was Ajaxplorer which then became Pydio. I really liked Pydio but didn't stick with it because it was too slow. I briefly played with Nextcloud but didn't stick with it either.
Eventually I ran into FileRun and loved it, even though it wasn't completely open source. FileRun is fast, worked on both desktop and mobile via browser nicely, and I never had an issue with it. It was free for personal use a few years ago, and unfortunately is not anymore. But it's worth the license if you have the money for it.
I tried setting up SeaFile but I had issues getting it working via a reverse proxy and gave up on it.
I like copyparty (https://github.com/9001/copyparty) - really dead simple to use and quick like FIleRun - but the web interface is not geared towards casual users. I also miss Filerun's "Request a file" feature which worked very nicely if you just wanted someone to upload a file to you and then be done.
On the topic of self-hosted file manager apps, I've really liked "filebrowser". Pair it with Syncthing or another sync daemon and you've got a minimal self-hosted Dropbox clone.
* https://github.com/filebrowser/filebrowser
* https://github.com/hurlenko/filebrowser-docker
Same. Just recently switch over to filebrowser-quantum. Can’t quite endorse it yet, but it’s promising so far (setup in a docker compose was a bit like wack-a-mole, but so was the original) https://github.com/gtsteffaniak/filebrowser
> I also miss Filerun's "Request a file" feature which worked very nicely if you just wanted someone to upload a file to you and then be done.
With the disclaimer that I've never used Filerun, I think this can be replicated with copyparty by means of the "shares" feature (--shr). That way, you can create a temporary link for other people to upload to, without granting access to browse or download existing files. It works like this: https://a.ocv.me/pub/demo/#gf-bb96d8ba&t=13:44
Copyparty can't (and doesn't want to) replace Nextcloud for many use cases because it supports one-way sync only. The readme is pretty clear about that. I'm toying with the idea of combining it with Syncthing (for all those devices where I don't want to do a full sync), does anybody have experience with that? I've seen some posts that it can lead to extreme CPU usage when combined with other tools that read/write/index the same folders, but nothing specifically about Syncthing.
Combining copyparty with Syncthing is not something I have tested extensively, but I know people are doing this, and I have yet to hear about any related issues. It's also a usecase I want to support, so if you /do/ hit any issues, please give word! I've briefly checked how Syncthing handles the symlink-based file deduplication, and it seemed to work just fine.
The only precaution I can think of is that copyparty's .hist folder should probably not be synced between devices. So if you intend to share an entire copyparty volume, or a folder which contains a copyparty volume, then you could use the `--hist` global-option or `hist` volflag to put it somewhere else.
As for high CPU usage, this would arise from copyparty deciding to reindex a file when it detects that the file has been modified. This shouldn't be a concern unless you point it at a folder which has continuously modifying files, such as a file that is currently being downloaded or otherwise slowly written to.