Rclone is an open source, multi threaded, command line computer program to manage or migrate content on cloud and other high latency storage. Its capabilities include sync, transfer, crypt, cache, union, compress and mount. The rclone website lists supported backends including S3, and Google Drive.
Descriptions of rclone often carry the strapline Rclone syncs your files to cloud storage. Those prior to 2020 include the alternative Rsync for Cloud Storage. Users have called rclone The Swiss Army Knife of cloud storage.
Rclone is well known for its rclone sync and rclone mount commands. It provides further management functions analogous to those ordinarily used for files on local disks, but which tolerate some intermittent and unreliable service. Rclone is commonly a front-end for media servers such as Plex, Emby or Jellyfin to stream content direct from consumer file storage services.
Official Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora, Gentoo, Arch, Brew, Chocolatey, and other package managers include rclone.
Enter an interactive configuration session.
rclone config
Set remote-name:
Keep going... (if need be, set config according to needs)
Select the drive to mount
Keep going... (if need be, set config according to needs)
Mount the remote as file system on a mountpoint.
rclone mount --vfs-cache-mode full <remote-name>:/ <name_of_mounted_drive_on_device>: