Education Ecosystem Blog

What is Cyberduck?

Cyberduck is a libre server and cloud storage browser, that is well known for its visually appealing UI, but the popular FTP client also has a wealth of options for keeping your files organized. The Quick Look feature allows you to easily preview files, and the transfer section offers plenty of choices to help streamline synchronization. 

What makes Cyberduck a candidate for best FTP client is easy integration of external editors, which allows for instantaneous file editing. Like FileZilla, Cyberduck is open source and multi-platform, but there is currently no Linux version unfortunately. As Alex explains in his project on Education Ecosystem, Integration with system technologies like Finder and keychain make Cyberduck especially appealing to Mac users.

How does Cyberduck work?
This article explains how to use Cyberduck as an FTP Upload Service. You can download the software from the Cyberduck website. 

How to connect to your account with Cyberduck

To access your account via FTP with Cyberduck, open the application and click the Open Connection button.

In the new screen that opens, provide the following connection details:

• Server: the hostname of your server;
• Port: 21;
• Username: your FTP username;
• Password: your FTP password;

When ready, click Connect to establish the connection and you will be connected to your account via FTP.

How to download files from your account to your computer

To download a file or folder from your hosting account to your machine, connect to your account. Then navigate to the desired file or folder, right-click its name and then click Download To.

This will open a new window in which you can see and navigate through the files and folders on your computer. Navigate to where you want to save the file and click on Choose to start the download. A new window named Transfers will appear in which you can follow the download progress.

How to upload files to your account from your computer;

To upload a file or folder from your computer to your account using Cyberduck, navigate to the desired location of the newly uploaded information on your hosting account. Then right-click in the application window and select Upload.

This will open a new window on which you can see all the files and folders on your computer. Navigate to the desired item you want to upload, left click it and then click Upload.

Cyberduck Integrations

Some of the popular tools that integrate with Cyberduck include;

• OpenStack
• Dropbox
• Amazon S3
• Rackspace Cloud Files
• Microsoft OneDrive
• Backblaze
• Microsoft Azure
• Google Drive

Cyberduck’s Features

Some of Cyberduck’s features include;

• Unparalleled bookmarking feature
• Supports external editors for instantaneous file editing
• Supports FTP, SFTP, OpenStack Swift, WebDAV and Amazon S3
• Advanced SSH functionality
• Available in multiple languages
• Convenient system tray notifications

Cyberduck Alternatives & Comparisons

Some of the most common alternatives to Cyberduck include;

FileZilla

This is a powerful and free software for transferring files over the Internet. It is a very popular FTP client and is used by webmasters from all over the world.

Putty

Putty is an SSH and telnet client, developed originally by Simon Tatham for the Windows platform. It is open source software that is available with source code and is developed and supported by a group of volunteers.

cURL

cURL in command lines or scripts to transfer data. It is also used in cars, television sets, routers, printers, audio equipment, mobile phones, tablets, and is the internet transfer backbone for thousands of software applications affecting billions of humans daily.

WinSCP

This is a popular SFTP client and FTP client for Microsoft Windows. Copy file between a local computer and remote servers using FTP, FTPS, SCP, SFTP, WebDAV or S3 file transfer protocols.

HTTPie

HTTPie is a Modern command line HTTP client – user-friendly curl alternative with intuitive UI, JSON support, syntax highlighting, wget-like downloads, and extensions.

Conclusion

Which is the best FTP client for you? That will depend on several factors including your OS of choice, your priorities and how much money you’re willing to spend. Cyberduck is a libre server and cloud storage browser for Mac and Windows with support for FTP, SFTP, WebDAV, Amazon S3, OpenStack Swift, Backblaze B2, Microsoft Azure & OneDrive, Google Drive and Dropbox. It is a tool in the File Transfer category of a tech stack. It is an open source tool with 970 GitHub stars and 111 GitHub forks. You can access Cyberduck’s open source repository on GitHub.