Driven

One-way, encrypted backup of your local folders to your own Google Drive. Fast, battery- and network-aware, with an in-app restore browser. Desktop app for Windows, macOS, and Linux, built with Tauri 2 + Vue 3 + Rust.

Driven mirrors the folders you choose into your own Google Drive in one direction only: local additions and changes are uploaded, and your source folders stay the single source of truth. With per-source client-side encryption turned on, file names and contents are encrypted on your machine before they ever leave it, so Google stores only ciphertext.

Driven uses your own Google OAuth credentials, so your files never pass through anyone else's servers. The first-run wizard includes a step-by-step, plain-English guide to creating that credential in the Google Cloud Console:

How Driven compares

Driven is a native desktop app that pairs end-to-end encryption with one-way backup to a cloud you already own, plus laptop-friendly touches (gitignore-aware excludes, battery and metered-network awareness) that CLI backup tools and consumer sync clients skip. Where it is thinner today (more backends, block-level dedup) is marked honestly below.

Legend: ✅ yes   🔶 partial (see note)   ❌ no

Capability	Driven	rclone	Drive for desktop	Duplicati	restic	Backblaze
One-way backup, source stays the source of truth	✅	🔶¹	❌²	✅	✅	✅
Automatic background sync (file-change watcher)	✅	❌³	✅	❌³	❌³	✅
Resumable, crash-safe transfers	✅	🔶⁴	✅	✅	✅	✅
Backs up to storage you own / control	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅	❌⁵
No account with the tool's vendor, no vendor servers	✅	✅	❌	✅	✅	❌
Choice of multiple storage backends	❌⁶	✅	❌	✅	✅	❌
End-to-end (client-side) encryption	✅	✅	❌⁷	✅	✅	🔶⁸
Encrypted file names, not just contents	✅	✅	❌	✅	✅	❌
Recovery phrase for the encryption key	✅	❌⁹	❌	❌⁹	❌⁹	❌⁹
Point-in-time restore (an earlier version by date)	✅	❌	🔶¹⁰	✅	✅	✅¹¹
Block-level deduplication	❌⁶	❌	❌	✅	✅	❌
Locked / open-file backup (Windows VSS)	✅	❌	🔶¹²	✅	✅	✅
Periodic integrity re-verification	✅	🔶¹³	❌	✅	🔶¹³	🔶¹³
Automatic battery / metered-network / sleep awareness	✅	❌	❌	❌	❌	❌¹⁴
Per-source include/exclude incl. .gitignore	✅	🔶¹⁵	❌	🔶¹⁵	🔶¹⁵	🔶¹⁵
Native desktop GUI app	✅	❌¹⁶	✅	🔶¹⁷	❌¹⁶	✅
In-app file search + selective restore	✅	❌	✅	✅	🔶¹⁸	✅
Open source (permissive license)	✅	✅	❌	✅	✅	❌
Cross-platform desktop (Windows, macOS, Linux)	✅	✅	❌¹⁹	✅	✅	❌¹⁹

Notes:

• ¹ rclone is a general-purpose sync/copy engine (including two-way bisync); backup direction is whatever you script.
• ² Drive for desktop is a two-way sync client, not a one-way backup.
• ³ rclone, restic, and Duplicati back up on a schedule (cron / systemd / built-in scheduler), not from a live file-change watcher.
• ⁴ rclone resumes at file granularity on re-run; mid-file resume of a large object depends on the backend.
• ⁵ Backblaze Personal Backup targets Backblaze's own cloud, not storage you supply.
• ⁶ Google Drive is Driven's only backend today; additional backends and block-level dedup are on the post-v1 backlog (issue #34), not shipped.
• ⁷ Drive uses server-side encryption; client-side encryption exists only for eligible Google Workspace accounts an admin configures, not consumer accounts.
• ⁸ Backblaze defaults to provider-managed keys; a user-set private key is optional, and its passphrase is entered on Backblaze's servers during a web restore.
• ⁹ These tools protect the key with a passphrase you must remember; only Driven generates a BIP39 recovery phrase you can write down to recover the key.
• ¹⁰ Google Drive keeps a limited recent version history; it is not a configurable point-in-time backup.
• ¹¹ Backblaze restores from within a retention window (30 days by default, extendable).
• ¹² Drive for desktop continuously syncs open files but does not take an application-consistent VSS snapshot.
• ¹³ rclone (check / cryptcheck) and restic (check) verify on demand rather than on an automatic schedule; Backblaze runs periodic server-side checks only.
• ¹⁴ Several tools offer manual bandwidth limits or schedules; only Driven automatically defers on battery, metered, or offline networks and resumes on wake.
• ¹⁵ rclone, Duplicati, restic, and Backblaze support custom include/exclude filter rules but not .gitignore semantics.
• ¹⁶ rclone and restic are command-line tools; their GUIs are separate third-party projects (for example RcloneView, Backrest).
• ¹⁷ Duplicati runs as a background service with a local web UI plus a tray helper, not a native desktop app.
• ¹⁸ restic search and selective restore are driven from the CLI (or a mounted snapshot), not an in-app browser.
• ¹⁹ Windows and macOS only; Linux needs third-party tools.

Feature sets verified 2026-07; check each project's current docs before relying on a cell.

Features

• One-way backup to your own Google Drive (no second cloud bill, no two-way sync surprises).
• Optional per-source client-side encryption (XChaCha20-Poly1305 for contents and file names; a BIP39 recovery phrase guards the master key).
• Scanner that honors .gitignore, built-in and custom exclude rules, and a configurable symlink policy.
• Concurrent, paced executor with retries and resumable uploads.
• Battery and network awareness: backups defer on battery and on metered or offline networks, then resume automatically.
• Windows Volume Shadow Copy support so locked files (Outlook PSTs, running DB files, VM disks) still back up.
• In-app restore browser with full-text file-name search and streaming decrypt.
• Activity dashboard with a live tail and filterable history.
• In-app auto-update with signed update manifests and a stable / dev channel selector.
• Anonymous, opt-out telemetry (coarse counts only; never file names, paths, or content).

Install

Download the installer for your platform from the GitHub Releases page. Pick the latest release and grab the asset for your OS:

• Windows: .msi or .exe (NSIS) installer
• macOS: .dmg (universal, Apple Silicon and Intel)
• Linux: .AppImage (portable) or .deb (Debian / Ubuntu)

Unsigned-binary notes (important)

Driven's V1 binaries are not yet code-signed with a paid OS certificate, so the operating system will warn you the first time you run them. The binaries are the same artifacts the public CI release pipeline produced; the warnings are about the missing certificate, not about the contents. You bypass them once.

Windows (SmartScreen)

When you run the installer, Windows SmartScreen may show "Windows protected your PC". Click "More info", then "Run anyway". After the first install, SmartScreen stops warning for that version.

macOS (Gatekeeper)

macOS will refuse to open an unsigned app on a double-click. Either:

• Right-click (or Control-click) the app in Finder, choose "Open", then confirm "Open" in the dialog, or

• Remove the quarantine attribute from a terminal:

  xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine "/Applications/Driven.app"

macOS auto-updater caveat (V1)

Because the macOS build is not signed with a Developer ID in V1, the in-app auto-updater is NOT reliable on macOS: the OS may block the silently-staged update from launching. This is a known V1 limitation. On macOS, update Driven by re-downloading the latest .dmg from the Releases page and reinstalling, rather than relying on the in-app updater. On Windows and Linux the in-app updater works normally. Code signing on macOS is tracked for a future release, after which the in-app updater will be supported there too.

First run: connect Google Drive (bring your own OAuth credentials)

Driven uses YOUR own Google OAuth client credentials rather than a shared app-wide client. This keeps you in control of your Google project and avoids a shared rate-limit / verification bottleneck. On first launch, the setup wizard walks you through:

1. Creating (or reusing) a Google Cloud project and enabling the Google Drive API.
2. Creating an OAuth 2.0 Client ID of type "Desktop app" and pasting its client id and client secret into the wizard. Driven uses the PKCE loopback flow, so the secret stays on your machine; refresh tokens are stored only in the OS keychain.
3. Signing in to the Google account you want to back up to and granting Drive access.
4. Choosing the folders to back up and (optionally) enabling encryption, which generates and shows your recovery phrase. Write the recovery phrase down: it is the only way to decrypt your backup if you lose the machine.

The wizard explains each step in-app. If you skip a step you can finish it later from Settings.

Update channels

Driven has two update channels, selectable in Settings > About:

• Stable: tagged releases (recommended for everyone).
• Dev: pre-release builds for testing upcoming changes; expect rough edges.

The About screen shows the current version, the active channel, and the release notes for the installed version (sourced from CHANGELOG.md). See the macOS updater caveat above before relying on in-app updates on macOS.

Build from source

Prereqs:

• Rust stable (rustup install stable)
• Node.js 22+ and pnpm 10+
• cargo install tauri-cli@^2 cargo-deny cargo-watch just (Windows users can install just via scoop install just)
• Linux build deps: libwebkit2gtk-4.1-dev libxdo-dev libssl-dev libayatana-appindicator3-dev librsvg2-dev libsoup-3.0-dev javascriptcoregtk-4.1

Clone and run in dev mode:

git clone https://github.com/pmaxhogan/driven
cd driven
pnpm --dir ui install
cargo tauri dev

Produce installers (output under src-tauri/target/release/bundle/):

cargo tauri build

Useful recipes (see the justfile):

just test    # cargo test --workspace + vitest
just lint    # cargo fmt --check + clippy + eslint
just bundle  # cargo tauri build
just deny    # cargo deny check

Run via Docker

The headless tools - the debugging CLI (driven-cli) and the stress / chaos harness (driven-chaos) - ship as a public image at ghcr.io/pmaxhogan/driven. The image does not include the desktop GUI; use the native installers above for that.

Tags:

• :latest / :stable - the highest stable release.
• :dev / :nightly - the latest main commit.
• :vX.Y.Z - an exact release; :vX - the highest stable build of major X.

# Default (no args) prints the CLI help:
docker run --rm ghcr.io/pmaxhogan/driven

# Run the CLI as normal:
docker run --rm ghcr.io/pmaxhogan/driven driven-cli --help

# Run the long chaos soak (issue #23) - the hermetic sweep then a seeded fuzz:
docker run --rm ghcr.io/pmaxhogan/driven:dev chaos-soak --duration 6h

# Or invoke the chaos harness directly:
docker run --rm ghcr.io/pmaxhogan/driven driven-chaos fuzz --duration 6h

Design docs

• design/DESIGN.md - architecture, locked decisions, resolved defaults
• design/SPEC.md - concrete crate / schema / IPC / config detail
• design/ROADMAP.md - M0..M10 phased milestones
• design/STRESS_HARNESS.md - chaos / fuzz / soak test catalogue
• design/IMPLEMENTATION.md - implementation orchestration plan

Contributing

See CONTRIBUTING.md for the local gates, the Conventional Commits requirement, and the branch / PR flow, and CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md for community expectations.

License

Dual-licensed under either of:

• MIT license (LICENSE-MIT)
• Apache License, Version 2.0 (LICENSE-APACHE)

at your option. See LICENSE for the summary and SPDX identifier.

Contributions intentionally submitted for inclusion in Driven by you, as defined in the Apache-2.0 license, shall be dual-licensed as above, without any additional terms or conditions.