File manager for working with cloud. Managing the "clouds": alternative ways to access cloud storage

The use of "cloud" drives from a mobile device is already a standard. So we can synchronize our work, and important files become available from all our devices. Using "cloud" drives, we reduce the risk of data loss as a result of some local failure. The probability of network storage failure is much lower than our local one. How to keep all "cloud" disks on a "short leash", but not breed on mobile device"zoo" of their local clients? The answer is to use file manager with the ability to connect cloud services.

ASTRO File Manager

Connecting "cloud" storage

regular file android manager maybe not bad, but it doesn't know how to work with any "cloud" storage. ASTRO File Manager easily combines both qualities: it can work as a file manager and can connect to almost all popular cloud drives. This will allow you to easily transfer files from local drives to "cloud" or move them between storages.

Search and filter

So, we have a whole cavalcade of different discs at our disposal. How to deal with the files on them? Search in ASTRO File Manager is made quite convenient. Let's start with the fact that the manager implements filtering by file type. If you are looking for a music file, then you do not need to rummage through documents and videos. Press the "filter" button (in general, the Russian language is quite good in this application, but translation flaws are still present).

The search is also implemented quite clearly. Press the magnifying glass and write the first letters of the file name. Looks for ASTRO File Manager on all available drives at once. But if you run it with the selected local card, then the search will be much faster - only in folders on this card.

Saving search history and open files

All search terms, which you did, are saved and can be called literally with two touches (tap) on the screen. You can also quickly access files that you have recently opened.

Actions on files

ASTRO File Manager is still a file manager, so by long tapping on a file you get a list of actions that you can do with it.

Connecting other "locations"

The interface of ASTRO File Manager is quite convenient. The two toolbars can be opened by swiping from the left or right edge of the screen towards the center. On the left side, a panel of "locations" and searches is called. The new "location" can set the path to another one of your accounts on the "cloud" drive, FTP, SFTP or SMB server.

Utilities

Behind the right edge of the screen are utilities that will allow you to kill unnecessary tasks or see the "load" (again, the subtleties of translation) of the SD card.

The utility for analyzing the used space on the SD card is very good here. She knows how to sort folders by size, which allows you to find the main consumers of space without much difficulty.

ES Explorer

An alternative to ASTRO File Manager is ES File Manager File Explorer. With similar functions, the choice of network storages in ES Explorer is wider. It is better adapted to the needs of the domestic user - Yandex.Disk, for example, is available.

ES Explorer stands out from the rest of the managers not only in its speed of work - against it, ASTRO may seem very slow to you. ES File Explorer has gestures in its arsenal! On a gesture, you can hang the opening of a folder, an action or an application call.

Need a good file manager with support for cloud drives? Feel free to choose any of the presented in our article. But if you need Yandex.Disk, then choose ES Explorer more boldly. He, according to my subjective feelings, also works faster.

When "cloud" services for storing and synchronizing data just appeared on the online horizon, most people wondered: should they be trusted with their data? Now, when even such giants as Google, Microsoft and Apple have entered this promising market, when many have already experienced all the conveniences of online document storage, another question has arisen: how not to get confused in all this? Since each storage service offers a certain amount of storage space for free, it is clear that it is much more profitable to host your files on several services than to pay for the premium features of one of them. For example, using five "clouds" from Google Drive, Dropbox, SugarSync, Yandex.Disk and SkyDrive, you can immediately get 29 GB of data storage.

However, remembering exactly what is stored on each service is not so easy, especially if, along with several services, a couple of accounts are used on each of them. Here you can not do without a kind of control center for "cloud" services. Our today's review is about this - about the managers of those files that are stored online. With their help, you can not only view all the data in a single window, but also search through all the "cloud" services, as well as copy files between them.

The Primadesk cloud data manager offers to combine more than twenty different services in one interface, including file storage, photo hosting, web mail, etc. Among the twenty-six services that are currently supported, there are such popular ones in our country as Dropbox, Facebook, Gmail, Google Drive, Picasa, Photobucket, SugarSync, Flickr, SkyDrive, Twitter.

Perhaps the most important feature of Primadesk is search. The service indexes all user data that is stored in connected accounts and makes it searchable. You can then search through all online content for keywords. The developers of the service have added a filter by date, with which you can select the results among the newest data. It's also handy to filter by content type so that only tweets, photos, documents, or email messages can be shown in the results.

However, it should be borne in mind that the service does not recognize files by types and the above filter works only for service categories. Therefore, for example, images stored on Dropbox will fall into the category of documents, not photos. Not very logical, and we hope the developers will pay attention to this and correct it in the next service updates.

Adding a new service is quite fast: somewhere it is enough to specify the account information, somewhere else and allow access to the Primadesk application to your account. Once the accounts have been added, you can navigate to the list of documents, photos, or mailboxes. Each of these categories is presented as a separate web application.

The interface of documents and photos is very similar to a file manager. Connected services are shown in the panel on the left.

Downloading data from them is fast enough: just a couple of mouse clicks - and you can view all the files stored online. And not just browsing, because Primadesk supports copying data between different services. In addition, files can be deleted and downloaded to local computer. Preview works for graphic files. Primadesk also allows you to quickly create a link to access a file and send it by mail. At the same time, you can specify the period for which access to the file is opened, a password for downloading, and receiving notifications about downloading.

Note that not all functions of the service work as we would like. For example, although Evernote support is declared, notes can only be deleted from the Primadesk interface. Neither copy nor preview work.

In addition, it is impossible to copy data between services that belong to different categories: documents and photos. For example, you can transfer a photo from Picasa to SkyDrive Photos without any problems, but on Dropbox it will not work in any way.

As for the web mail application, it has a rather traditional interface. Its only advantage over regular web mail services is that it collects emails from multiple mailboxes at the same time.

As part of a free Primadesk account, you can add up to five accounts, and, for example, Gmail, Picasa and Google Drive count as three, even if only one Google account is actually used. For five dollars a month, you can remove this restriction. Another advantage paid version regarding the data backup function. This may seem a little strange, but, among other things, Primadesk suggests creating another copy of the data that is actually already a copy of the information from hard drive. A free account can store up to 1 GB of data, and after upgrading to a paid account tariff plan- from 10 GB and more. Backup copy created in the online file manager.

The main advantage of Otixo over Primadesk is working with WebDav and FTP protocols. Thanks to this, the possibilities of working with the service are significantly expanded. If some "cloud" service is not in the list of supported, but it works with WebDav, you can connect it. For example, Russian users can add their Yandex.Disk account to Otixo.

Otixo supports Dropbox, SugarSync, Picasa, SkyDrive, Box, Google Drive and a number of other popular services. On all services, where it is not prohibited by the terms of use, you can connect multiple accounts.

After a simple connection procedure, consisting of entering a login-password and authorizing the Dropbox application, services are added to the file manager window. There are no restrictions on the number of connected services, but there is a traffic limit. As part of free version You can copy and download files up to 2 GB in total. The traffic limit can be removed by purchasing a premium subscription for $10 per month. There are also affiliate program, which provides for an increase in traffic by 100 MB for each user referred to Otixo.

The Otixo file manager deserves all the praise. It works perfectly - you can copy files not only using the context menu and buttons on the toolbar, but also by simply dragging and dropping between different services. Since it takes some time to copy from one service to another, the progress of the operation is displayed in the manager window, but this does not interfere with the work with the service.

Using the Otixo file manager, you can copy and move files, rename them, delete them, download to your computer (so far only one at a time), and also create new folders on cloud services and upload files to them directly from the Otixo interface. File preview works not only for images, but also for some other types of files. For example, content PDF documents can be viewed at Google help viewer.

The service also offers content search. Results can be sorted by name, size, last modified date, and location. To ensure that the file index is always up to date, synchronization with connected services is provided, which can be started manually.

There is also a file sharing function on Otixo. The service can generate public links and send them to the specified addresses, accompanied by a message. For each file, you can specify the expiration date of the link and protect it with a password. Accessed files are marked with a special icon in the manager. In addition, there is special section MY SHARED FILES, which should show all shared files and their validity period, but, unfortunately, it did not work for us (as it turned out, not only for us - the corresponding topic has long been created on the service support forum).

Another interesting feature of Otixo is collaboration on projects. In your account, you can create a workspace - Space, copy links to files stored on different services into it, and open access to it to other people. Depending on what rights are granted to other users, they can view files related to the project, add files from their account, comment on content, download files. At the same time, no one except the owner of the files knows on which service they are physically stored, which can be regarded as an additional level of security. As part of working area three sections are created: the first one stores files, the second stores all user actions, and the third displays a list of invited participants.

Although Otixo is primarily designed to work with files in the browser, thanks to WebDAV support, files can also be accessed from the desktop. To work with Otixo on Windows computers and Mac can for example use free client CyberDuck. Select the WebDav connection type (HTTP/SSL) in its settings, specify the server address dav.otixo.com and your username and password to log into Otixo.

The contents of all services connected to Otixo will be displayed in the CyberDuck window. With this client, files can be viewed, downloaded to a computer, edited, and folders can be synchronized with directories on a local drive.

⇡ Joukuu

Another solution designed to simplify the management of files stored in the cloud is Joukuu. You can work with data not only through the web interface, but also with the help of a client, which, however, so far exists only for Windows. On this moment Joukuu supports only three services: Dropbox, Google Drive and Box.net, but they promise to add work with SkyDrive and SugarSync in the near future.

Like others similar services, Joukuu offers free and paid accounts. The first one has some nasty limitations: you can't connect multiple accounts on the same service, you can't create your own categories for files, and you can't search through data stored on multiple services.

The free Joukuu Lite client is designed in the style of Windows 8. The list of connected services is displayed at the top of the window. Below it is a list of categories. By clicking on them, you can hide all files except documents, images, video files. If you choose to show data on all connected accounts at the same time, root folders will be displayed in one window, and a service icon will be shown opposite each of them. The possibilities of working with files are reduced to selecting them in a folder and deleting them.

Joukuu Lite supports creating new folders. Adding files to cloud services is done by simply dragging and dropping them into the application window. You can also add files and folders to the cloud using the Backup To Lite context menu command. Once you select an account, the files will be uploaded automatically.

Also, files stored in the "cloud" can be opened on the desktop and edited using desktop applications. This also applies Google files Docs - they open in MS Office programs. After that, the changes made are saved and the files are converted back to the Google Docs format.

To be honest, against the background of competitors, Joukuu looks rather weak, because the service has practically no advantages, and there are more than enough restrictions. In addition, we did not manage to try the web interface of the service - registration on it does not seem to work.

⇡SMEStorage

Almost all services that provide access to online data storage necessarily have mobile applications. But most file managers for "cloud" services have not yet been able to please their users with the ability to access from smartphones and tablets. But this does not apply to the SMEStorage service, which offers to manage your files from devices on Android based and iOS, as well as BlackBerry. All mobile clients are paid. In addition, the service has programs for all major desktop operating systems.

SMEStorage supports over thirty different services, including SkyDrive, Google Drive, Gmail, Google Sites, Dropbox, Box.com, iCloud, iKeepinCloud, Amazon S3, SugarSync, Windows Azure, Ubuntu One. It is also possible to connect via FTP and WebDAV protocols. As part of a free account, each user is offered up to 5 GB to synchronize files stored on other services (data is hosted using Amazon S3). Synchronization settings are specified separately for each connected service.

The web interface of SMEStorage, frankly, can hardly be called intuitive. There are a lot of poorly visible links and inscriptions in it, and it is quite difficult to immediately highlight the main thing against the background of all this diversity. Everything has a touch of Windows OS, which will certainly not appeal to Mac fans.

SMEStorage has an online file manager with search functionality, fast image uploads to Flickr, and tools to share data with other people. For each public file, you can specify a password and a period during which it can be downloaded.

For collaboration, the ability to share data within groups can be useful. You can invite other users to the group and manage data access permissions. You can add files to a group from the file manager, but it is also interesting that they can get there automatically, based on pre-created rules (for example, files that have certain characters in their names, or files placed in a particular folder).

One of the distinguishing features of SMEStorage is the availability of desktop clients for working with . Some of them are paid, but the basic ones can be used for free. MultiCloud Explorer for Windows is a multi-tab file manager. With it, you can connect to all available services, add new accounts, search through all files, share files with other users.

The client works, I must say, not very quickly - when moving from folder to folder, you need to wait a few seconds every time. But on the other hand, without leaving the program, you can copy files from the "cloud" to local disk or vice versa. When downloading data using SMEStorage MultiCloud Explorer, you can encrypt files, as well as tag them. The latter are later convenient to use for searching. Another one convenient opportunity— adding frequently used files to Favorites. To this virtual folder you can access both from the desktop client and through the web interface (you don’t need to go to the file manager for this, the Favorite link is visible on all pages of the service).

For free accounts on SMEStorage, there is a limit on the number of connected accounts - no more than three (at the same time, it is also impossible to connect several accounts of the same service). However, there is one trick here. As you remember, the number of connected accounts on the Otixo service is not limited, but there is only a traffic limit. And Otixo, like SMEStorage, supports WebDAV. Well, we add all the accounts from the "cloud" data storages to Otixo, then we create a new WebDAV account on SMEStorage, specify the connection settings to the Otixo server and get the ability to access all files (checked - it works!). Of course, downloading large files from servers in this way is not worth it - you will quickly exhaust the Otixo limit of 2 GB, but this method makes it possible to search through all the files stored in the "cloud" directly from the desktop.

⇡ Conclusion

Managers for working with files stored in the cloud have appeared quite recently, and it is interesting to see how each of them finds their own ways to attract users. Primadesk focuses on search, Otixo pleases with support for unlimited accounts and WebDAV, Joukuu allows you to work with files from a client program, and SMEStorage creates applications for mobile platforms and relies on collaboration. There is no doubt that the developers of these services are watching their competitors, and therefore, in the very near future, file managers for the "cloud" will most likely adopt the best from each other.

At the current moment best service is quite difficult to distinguish. In terms of functionality, SMEStorage can be considered the most-most, but it does not have very user-friendly interface, and it works slowly. For copying files between services, quickly viewing and editing files stored in the cloud, Otixo is best suited, but keep in mind that some of its features are still being tested and therefore may not work. Primadesk can offer good set supported services and a web client that supports multiple accounts, but the division into photos and documents does not allow you to copy data between all accounts.

Gone are the days when all of our data could fit on a hard drive. And even CDs, DVDs and HD discs cannot always fit all the amount of information that each of us uses all the time. Yes, and store information on removable drives it’s not always convenient, because you can forget it somewhere and that’s all - the files you need will no longer be available. And here various cloud storages come to our aid, which allow you to access any files and folders from any device, the main thing is that there is access to the Internet.

But the more cloud storage appeared, the more we added our folders and files there, the harder it was to find desired file promptly. After all, it is really very difficult to remember where exactly you uploaded your vacation photos - to Yandex.Disk or to DropBox? And where did the reports on the work of the financial department go? Are they on OneDrive or MediaFile? In order to prevent this from happening to you, a program such as Air Explorer Pro, which is an excellent file manager for cloud storage.

Download Air Explorer Pro for cloud storage

You can download Air Explorer Pro for free via torrent from the link at the end of the article. Thanks to this program, you can manage files directly in the cloud, perform manipulations such as "Copy / Paste" between different clouds, use a centralized search for files and folders in various storages, set up multiple accounts from one server, and much, much more! With Air Explorer Pro it is very convenient, in addition, the program takes up a minimum of space and allows you to combine several cloud storages into one to increase the storage capacity!

Starting with this issue, we decided to make an experiment: in each issue we talk about some interesting article from Hacker fans. If you or your friends are working on some interesting, free (and preferably open-source) thing - write to me at [email protected].website. Perhaps in next issue We'll tell you about your brainchild!

Introduction

I have been using cloud services for a long time: I write code in Cloud9 and Koding, I store data in Dropbox and GDrive. But in all these services, I was missing something all the time. They are comfortable, of course, and functional. But for people who spend more than a decade at a computer, sometimes they want to use the familiar environment, wherever possible. Which has shown itself well, which has existed for a long time and is capable of much. I missed two-pane file managers.

To work with local data, you can use Total or Midnight. But when the data is online, when you don’t know what computer you will be using tomorrow, when you want freedom from the OS, browser, and you want to achieve maximum mobility - cloud services, exactly what you need.

Today we will talk about a file manager that combines cloud mobility and the familiar two-pane interface.

What Cloud Commander Can Do

Cloud Commander was developed for convenient operation with local data and remote server. The main difference from the usual SSH + Midnight / vi / Emacs ... is that the console and editor in the browser can accommodate much more text, work faster (local storage, web sockets, as well as the diff mechanism during file saving), support auto-completion, contain the entire history of commands for the session and a lot of interesting things :).

Editor

Cloud Commander is equipped with one of the best online text editors, Ace, which supports more than 60 languages. Therefore, it doesn’t matter if you are building websites in HTML and CSS, writing JavaScript code, editing nginx configs or sausage exploit in C - everywhere you will find friendly syntax highlighting that will automatically adjust to the desired syntax. Launched by F4 or in the Edit menu by clicking the right mouse button. Esc exit. By the way, this article is written in Commander's editor :).

Console

The console uses the jq-console library, which the reader may have come across at Code School and many similar resources. The principle of operation of the console is simple: using web sockets, requests are sent to the server, which, in turn, passes them to the command interpreter, after which the server sends the result to the client. All this works much faster than AJAX. The speed is achieved due to the size of the sent data, they do not contain fields inherent in HTTP requests.

Using the console, you can ping remote servers, push commits to the repository and do almost everything that you can do in a regular Linux console :). It just launches. Just press the ~ button. Esc exit. If necessary, in open folder Commander can be loaded alone or more files by simply dragging them from the OS. In the same way, you can download a file (or by selecting the Download option from the menu).

Everything is not limited to the ability to work with local files, through context menu you can upload files to Dropbox, GDrive, GitHub and just as easily upload them from there. When loading Commander at a low resolution, it will adjust and either remove one of the panels, or even change appearance to a more mobile friendly one.

The editor, console, menu and almost all additional functionality will work almost anywhere where there is a browser and JavaScript :).

Where to get Cloud Commander

Cloud Commander can be downloaded from the official site, where you can also see a demo, read a blog, see source. After downloading and unpacking, do not forget to write npm install in the Cloud Commander folder so that the libraries of additional functionality come up :). Commander requires Node.js to work. Download the distribution kit from the official site and install latest version. Another way to install Cloud Commander is via npm (Node Package Manager). It is enough to write the command:

Npm install -g cloudcmd # Install node cloudcmd # Run

Summing up

Cloud Commander is distributed under the MIT license, the source code is on GitHub, so come on in, download it, try it, if you have any ideas - write an issue or email, if you find a bug - send a pull request.

Once upon a time, all our files fit on a computer hard drive and several floppy disks. Today we are increasingly using cloud storage, and more and more services are appearing on the market that provide quite impressive disk capacities for free. And very soon, many may encounter an unexpected situation when it will not be easy to find the desired file stored on one of several cloud drives. Already today we can not always remember where we uploaded the worksheet - to Google Drive or to Dropbox? Or where is the final version of the presentation stored - in OneDrive or in SugarSync? And where did we save those same vacation photos - to Flickr or, maybe, to Yandex.Disk?

It is best to use file managers in such a situation, which allow you to work with different cloud services in the same way as if they were hard disks your computer. There are two options. First, you can use the usual desktop file managers like the popular Total Commander, into which applications of different cloud services are automatically integrated in the form of separate folders or disks. IN mobile version Total Commander for Android has built-in plugins for accessing Google Drive, Microsoft Live and Dropbox, while installing additional plugins such as TotalBox or Google Drive is also supported.

The second option is to use specialized online services available from any computer with Internet access. This option, in our opinion, is certainly preferable, since we just place our files in the "clouds" for this, so that they are always, so to speak, at arm's length. Here are a few such online services that can work with many popular cloud storages.

1. Primadesk

Primadesk is not only an online service, it is also a mobile application available in versions for Android and iOS.

The main idea of ​​Primadesk is that when you open the "desktop" of this service, you immediately get information about everything that happened to your accounts in the last 24 hours, which makes it especially useful if you use many different cloud services. You can connect several accounts to Primadesk at once Email from one provider (for example, several Gmail accounts) and manage them all from one window. Additionally, you can install a browser extension for quick access to connected storages without the need to enter passwords.

After registering in the Primadesk web service, you will be asked to connect accounts of 39 different network services– from Dropbox and Google Drive to Facebook and Twitter. Within a few hours, the application will scan these accounts, after which you can search among the files hosted there, including keyword, date range, and content.

You can move files between different services with a simple drag and drop, while 256-bit encryption and HTTPS access keep your data safe. By the way, since the founders of Primadesk are the same people who developed the famous ZoneAlarm firewall, you can count on the fact that they take security quite seriously.

Any Primadesk user can connect up to 5 accounts for free network services and a gigabyte of disk space for data backup, and for an additional fee you can get support for an unlimited number of accounts and 10 or 30 GB of storage for backup. A noticeable and for some, a significant drawback of Primadesk is the lack of the ability to view and edit Evernote notes. And, alas, Primadesk does not know how to work with any domestic cloud storage.

2. Cloud Cafe

In terms of the number of cloud services supported, CloudKafé is a solid mid-ranger - there are 18 of them - but at the same time it is completely free. And, lo and behold, it has support for Yandex.Disk! But, unlike Primadesk, this service does not have mobile applications and it works exclusively through a web interface.

At the same time, CloudKafé boasts a beautiful, concise design and a unique Baskets feature. Its meaning is that you can collect files from different cloud storages into such baskets and share them with friends or colleagues simply by entering their email addresses.

Another unusual feature implemented in CloudKafé is a single address book for Google accounts, Yahoo and LinkedIn, and you can use multiple accounts for each service.

All files stored in the connected clouds are sorted into large understandable groups - "Documents", "Photos", "Videos", "Notes", "Contacts" and the already mentioned "Baskets". This is very practical, since it is not uncommon for, for example, photos or videos to accidentally end up in document folders in cloud storage, where they remain forgotten forever.

At the same time, CloudKafé supports viewing and editing Evernote notes, and this is a big plus for free service. There is a function to search for files in all connected clouds with the subsequent distribution of the results by the above groups-categories.

CloudKafé has only two noticeable drawbacks - the inability to move files between different cloud storages and the lack of a backup function, which is excusable for a free service. In general, this is a very convenient and easy-to-use web application.

3.JoliCloud

JoliCloud, like Primadesk, is available as an online service through a web interface, as well as a mobile application, but only for devices running iOS.

By registering and connecting to JoliCloud desired accounts, you get a large desktop where you can manage all your cloud services - there are 13 of them in total. JoliCloud does not have a built-in mail client, instead, a single “social stream” is proposed, including Facebook, Google+. Feedly, Tumblr and other similar services. JoliCloud has a built-in feature to view your Evernote notes.

All cloud storages are available in the Drive section, where you can view and delete files. Thanks to the pie chart right side page, you can clearly see how much space is occupied on a particular cloud drive. Unfortunately, JoliCloud does not have the ability to move files between different accounts, there is no single search function across all clouds, and there is no backup. In addition, JoliCloud is still in beta, which may hint at the doubts of the authors themselves about the stability of the service.

It is curious that the creators of JoliCloud simultaneously offer on their website a completely free Joli OS operating system based on ubuntu linux, which is a typical web OS and is designed for outdated and low-power machines. The kit offers about one and a half thousand applications and, of course, a JoliCloud account.

4.ZeroPC

This is probably the most unusual online file manager: when you enter ZeroPC, you do not find yourself in a boring table view window with file lists, but on a desktop worthy of a full-fledged operating system where labels can be found different applications, including web browser and text editor. All these applications are extremely simple, but the idea itself is certainly curious.

ZeroPC is available both through the web interface and through mobile applications for Android and iOS. In fact, this is a “micro operating system”, which has a gigabyte of data storage space (for an additional fee, you can increase it to 5 or 50 GB), support for the free movement of files between different clouds, which appear here as conventional drives, SSL encryption, support for multiple email accounts, and quick search by keyword, provider, file type and date range. The original Cloud Attach feature allows you to attach any file from connected clouds directly to email in the Gmail service.

Despite the rich functionality, the ZeroPC web interface is still overloaded with unnecessary applications, it is difficult to navigate in it. Mobile applications much simpler, but they just do not have those features that you might like in ZeroPC. In general, this is an original, multifunctional, but controversial solution for an amateur in terms of usability.