The Windows app

Requirements

• Windows 11 (build 22000 or later), on x64 or ARM64 PCs. The Explorer status flyout needs Windows 11 22H2 or later.
• The Microsoft Store. Install CloudMount from there, or with WinGet; the Store keeps it up to date.
• About 250 MB of disk space for the app, plus whatever you keep downloaded.

Two parts: the app and the sync engine

CloudMount for Windows runs as two processes:

• The sync engine runs rclone and the Cloud Files sync. It works in the background, has no window, and keeps running when you close the app window.
• The app is the tray icon and the window you use to add and manage drives. When you close the window, it’s destroyed to free memory, and the tray icon stays.

Only your Windows account can talk to your sync engine. If the engine stops unexpectedly, the app starts it again; if that fails, the app shows CloudMount’s sync engine isn’t running with a Start it button.

Start at sign-in

The first-run setup offers Start CloudMount when I sign in, which is checked by default. CloudMount then starts in the notification area without opening its window. You can change this later in Settings. If you turn CloudMount off in Windows’ own Startup apps settings, only Windows can turn it back on, and CloudMount links you there.

Quitting

Quit CloudMount in the tray menu stops the app and the sync engine. Nothing syncs until CloudMount starts again. If changes are still waiting to upload, CloudMount asks first; they’re kept and sync on the next start.

Updates

The Microsoft Store closes CloudMount to update it, and CloudMount starts again in the background afterwards. Drives, settings, the pause and waiting uploads carry over. The next time you open the window after an update that adds a feature, What’s new lists it once, with Try it where it has a page of its own. Settings → What’s new shows the whole list again.

The tray icon

The icon shows the overall state: up to date, syncing, paused, offline, needs attention, or stopped. Its tooltip says more, such as Syncing 3 changes or 2 drives need attention.

Click it to open the window. Right-click for Open CloudMount, Open CloudMount folder, Search drives, Save a link…, Pause syncing (2, 8 or 24 hours, or until you resume) or Resume syncing, and Quit CloudMount.

Adding a drive

Add drive walks you through choosing a service, filling in its settings, and connecting:

• Popular services are listed first: Google Drive, Dropbox, OneDrive, Nextcloud, SFTP, SMB, Amazon S3 and compatible storage, Backblaze B2, and an encrypted drive.
• On your network lists the SMB, WebDAV and SFTP servers that announce themselves on your local network. Choosing one opens its service’s form with the address filled in and the drive named after the server.
• All services is a searchable list of every backend rclone supports. See Backends.
• The form is built from rclone’s own description of each backend, so it asks the same questions as rclone config. Rarely needed settings are under Advanced options.
• For services that use OAuth, such as Google Drive, Dropbox and OneDrive, CloudMount opens the sign-in page in your browser. Sign in, allow access, and come back: CloudMount finishes setting up as soon as the service hands back access. If you closed the page, use Open the sign-in page again. If the sign-in can’t finish in the browser, Add with a pasted token instead shows the rclone authorize command to run on a computer with rclone and a browser, with Copy command, and takes the token it prints.
• Test connection tries the form’s settings without saving anything and says what went wrong in plain words. Adding a drive that wasn’t tested, or whose test failed, asks first. Services that sign in through the browser are tested by signing in instead.
• Wrapping drives, such as an encrypted drive, offer your drives in their remote setting: pick one, then add a folder after the colon, such as gdrive:Encrypted.
• An encrypted drive’s passwords can be generated with Generate password, and are then shown so you can keep them. Adding the drive asks you to confirm you’ve saved them.
• Drive names can use letters, numbers, spaces and . _ - + @, as on Android. They can’t start or end with a space or -, or be . or .., and two drives can’t have names that differ only in case. On Windows they also can’t end with a dot. The drive’s folder in Explorer takes the same name.

A new drive is shown in File Explorer straight away. On the free plan, only one drive syncs in File Explorer, so a second one is added but not shown. To show it, stop showing the other drive first, or go Pro.

Drives page

Lists your drives with their state. Each drive’s menu has Show in File Explorer or Stop showing in File Explorer, Check for changes now, Settings, Rename and Remove. Renaming a drive renames its folder too.

A drive’s page

• Its state, with a button for the usual fix: Sign in, Accept change, Get Pro, and so on.
• Show in File Explorer and the folder’s location.
• Drive letter: None, or a free letter. See Drive letters.
• Changes on the drive: whether the service reports changes or is checked on a schedule, the interval for checked drives, and Check now. See Changes made elsewhere.
• Thumbnails: Not on metered connections, Always or Off.
• Free up space, with how much the drive uses on this PC.
• Always kept on this device (Pro): the files and folders you set to always keep in File Explorer, whether each is downloaded yet and how much space it takes. Stop keeping unsets it; what’s downloaded stays until you free up space.
• Storage insights: the drive’s space, as the service reports it, and how its use changed over the last 30 days, once CloudMount has read it on two different days. CloudMount reads it when you open the drive’s page and when Explorer’s status flyout shows it, and keeps one reading a day. Size folders adds up each top-level folder, largest first. It lists the whole drive, a few folders at a time and one at a time on OneDrive, so it only runs when you ask; a folder that takes more than 3 minutes is Too large to size. Sizes are kept for 15 minutes, and leaving the page stops sizing. Scan files looks through up to 256 folders and 50,000 files for the 20 largest files, which Show in File Explorer finds there, and for files with the same name and size. Duplicates whose checksums match can be deleted one copy at a time, never the last one. CloudMount reads the checksums again just before it deletes, and refuses if any copy changed or has changes waiting to sync. A deleted copy goes to the service’s trash, if it has one. Results are kept for 15 minutes, as for folders.
• Conflicts kept as copies.
• Sign in again, for an expired sign-in or to switch accounts.
• Drive settings: the backend’s own options. Passwords aren’t shown; leave a password empty to keep it.
• Check this drive lists the drive’s top folder and reads its space, without changing anything, and shows the network, the connection and the free space, with what went wrong in plain words and the service’s own error below. Copy report copies a report for support. See Getting help.

Files

Files browses your drives in the app itself, next to File Explorer. It reads the drive directly, so it also works for drives you don’t show in File Explorer, and looking around downloads nothing:

• Pick a drive, open folders, and go back up with the path at the top, Backspace or Alt+Up. Click a column’s heading (Name, Date modified, Size) to sort by it, and again to reverse the order, or use Sort. Folders stay first, and the order you pick is used for every folder. F5 lists the folder again, and Ctrl+Shift+N makes a new folder.
• Open a file with its app. On a drive shown in File Explorer it opens from the drive’s folder, as it would in Explorer, so your changes sync back. On any other drive CloudMount downloads a read-only copy to open: to edit the file, show the drive in File Explorer. Copies are cleared a day later.
• New folder, Rename and Delete change the drive itself, and File Explorer catches up. Deleting goes to the service’s own trash where it has one; CloudMount asks first. A file or folder with changes on this PC that haven’t synced yet, or that a transfer or sync task is using, isn’t changed until they’re done.
• Copy to… and Move to… open Copying and moving between drives with what you selected.
• Copy public link makes a link anyone can open, where the service supports links, as from Explorer’s menu.
• The star adds the folder you’re in to Favorites (up to 20), as on Android. A favorite on a drive the free plan doesn’t serve stays in the list, marked, until you can open it again.

Select several items with Ctrl or Shift to copy, move or delete them together; the bar above the list acts on what you selected, and the line below it counts the items. A file or folder’s menu (right-click, or Shift+F10) has the same actions, and Show in File Explorer on drives shown there. Open Files from the window, from a drive’s page (Browse in CloudMount), or from a search result’s menu (Show in CloudMount).

On the free plan, Files browses the drive shown in File Explorer, and reads vaults; changing a vault needs Pro. With Pro it browses every drive.

Search

Search finds files and folders by name on every drive shown in File Explorer, including folders you’ve never opened, which Windows Search can’t see:

• Filter by files or folders, type (documents, images, video, audio, archives, books and comics), extension, date and size. A date filter only finds items whose date the drive knows, which most drives don’t for folders.
• Leave drives out of the search.
• Open a result with its app, or Show in File Explorer to open its folder with it selected. Show in CloudMount opens its folder in Files.
• Save a search (up to 20) to run it again later; saved searches show their last results while they refresh.

Open it from the window, from the tray menu, or from a folder’s CloudMount menu in Explorer, which searches that folder and everything in it.

Searching lists folders on the drives, so it’s limited to the first 50 matches and 128 folders per drive, and says when it stopped early. Drives that are offline, or not synced on the free plan, aren’t searched.

Copying and moving between drives

Copy or move between drives copies or moves files and folders from one drive to another, or within one drive, without saving them on your PC. Start it from a file or folder’s CloudMount menu in Explorer (Copy to… or Move to…), or from the Activity page, where you pick the files in the app.

• Choose the destination drive and folder, and what happens to files that already exist there: Keep both (the new file gets a numbered name, such as photo (1).jpg), Replace or Skip.
• Within one drive, the copy runs on the service itself where the backend supports it. Between drives, files stream through CloudMount; they don’t land in your drive folders or fill your disk.
• Both drives’ folders in Explorer show the result when it’s done.
• Transfers run one at a time, wait while syncing is paused, and pick up where they left off after a restart: files already copied aren’t copied again.
• A move waits for its files’ changes to finish syncing first.
• Copying and moving between drives needs Pro, because the free plan has one drive in use. On the free plan you can still copy and move within that drive.

Saving a link

Save a link downloads the file a web link points to and saves it in a drive folder, without keeping it on your PC. Open it from the Activity page or the tray menu, or share a link to CloudMount from your browser or another app with Windows’ Share. Only http and https links work, and links to web pages, or to files that need a sign-in, are refused instead of saved.

Sync and backup

Sync and backup keeps an ordinary folder on your PC in step with a folder on a drive, on a schedule, as sync folders do on Android. Use it for files that apps need as real files, or for a folder outside your CloudMount folder, such as Pictures. It needs Pro.

Kind	What it does
Two-way sync	Changes on either side are copied to the other, including deletions. Uses rclone’s bisync.
Upload only	Copies new and changed files from the PC to the drive. Never deletes.
Download only	Copies new and changed files from the drive to the PC. Never deletes.
Folder backup	Uploads new and changed files, never deletes on the drive, and runs about a minute after files in the folder change, as well as on its schedule. Back up a folder offers Pictures and Documents.

• Schedule: every 15 minutes, hour, 6 hours, 12 hours or day. Run now runs it at once. Tasks run one at a time, wait while syncing is paused or waits for an unmetered connection, and follow your speed limits.
• Conflicts in two-way sync: Keep both (the default; the older copy gets a .conflict name) or Newer wins.
• First run: you see a preview of what it copies each way first, and nothing is deleted on the first run.
• Safety stops: a two-way sync stops instead of continuing when more than half of the files on one side were deleted, when every file seems to have changed (for example after a clock or time zone jump), or when its record of the last sync is lost, for example after renaming the drive. You then choose what happens: Restore the missing files or Rebuild copy what’s missing back and delete nothing; Delete them on the other side too and Sync anyway let the run go through once.
• If a drive’s settings change to point at other data, its tasks wait until you choose Keep using this drive or delete them.
• History and log show the last 20 runs, with Copy and Save.
• The folders and direction can’t be changed after saving; make a new task instead. Removing a drive removes its tasks; your files stay.
• A task’s folder can’t be in your CloudMount folder, or contain it: those files already sync with their drive, and a task would download every online-only file.

Vaults

The Vaults page lists your vaults, encrypted folders on drives you already have, apart from your other drives. New vault and Restore make and open them, and a vault’s page shows its key and saves its recovery kit. On the free plan, the page explains vaults and offers Pro; the vaults you have stay listed, read-only.

Activity

The Activity page shows:

• Needs your attention: drives that can’t sync, and sync tasks that stopped or failed, with the fix.
• Sync and backup: tasks running or waiting to run, with their progress.
• Copies, moves and links: transfers between drives and saved links, with their progress and time left, Cancel, Retry for failed and cancelled ones, and Show in File Explorer when they’re done.
• Transfers: uploads in progress, with speed and time left. Downloads from opening a file show their progress in Explorer.
• Waiting to sync: queued uploads, deletes, moves and new folders. Failed items say why and when CloudMount tries again.
• Conflicts.

A badge on Activity in the navigation pane shows the page’s news without opening it: a red count of what needs your attention, which keeps a failed transfer until you have seen it on the page or cleared it, or else the number of copies, moves and links in progress, amber while they wait for syncing to resume. Narrator reads what it counts.

Drive states

State	Meaning
Up to date	Nothing to do.
Syncing N changes	Uploading your changes.
Paused: N changes waiting	Syncing is paused; changes are queued.
Offline: CloudMount keeps trying	The drive can’t be reached.
Sign in again	The sign-in expired or was revoked.
Paused: its settings changed	The drive now points at other data. See Syncing.
Missing from your configuration	The drive was removed from rclone.conf outside CloudMount.
Can’t be shown in File Explorer	A local-folder drive overlaps the CloudMount folder, so it would sync into itself.
Not synced on the free plan	A drive kept from Pro; the free plan syncs a different one. It stays listed in Explorer but its files can’t be opened.
Requires Pro	Encrypted, combined and other wrapping drives, and memory drives, need Pro.
Read-only on the free plan	A vault without Pro: its files open and copy out, and changes made on the PC wait until you go Pro again.
Locked	Your configuration is encrypted; enter its password.

Language

The app is in English for now.