Rclone Sync Applet

COSMIC panel applet for monitoring and triggering rclone bisync jobs, plus managing an optional systemd --user timer per job.

Requirements

• COSMIC desktop (Pop!_OS 24.04 / COSMIC).
• rclone installed and available in PATH.

Building & running

cargo build --release

COSMIC applet (easy local install on Pop!_OS 24.04)

This project is a COSMIC panel applet (not a standalone GTK tray app).

To install it for your user account and test it in the panel:

./scripts/install-cosmic-applet-local.sh

Then open COSMIC Settings → Panel and add Rclone Sync Helper.

Configuration (job files)

The app creates per-job configuration files under an XDG config directory (via directories::ProjectDirs) at:

• $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/io/rclone/sync-helper/jobs/<job>.toml

These job files must not contain secrets. Store your rclone credentials in rclone’s own config (default: ~/.config/rclone/rclone.conf).

System timer (systemd --user)

The app can create/manage a per-job systemd --user timer and service:

• rclonesync-helper@<job>.service runs rclone_sync_helper run --job <job>
• rclonesync-helper@<job>.timer triggers it on an interval

From the UI, use Install units, then Enable, and optionally Apply interval.

Usage notes

• The helper stores cached sync state under $XDG_STATE_HOME (usually ~/.local/state) in the app’s project directory.
• When you click “Sync now”, it runs rclone bisync for the configured job and records the timestamp/logs whether it succeeds or fails.