28 Mar 2025 1 min read Home Lab

rclone mounts iCloudDrive on Ubuntu system

Data center

Why rclone: To access iCloud files on Linux without relying on iCloud's web storage interface.

1, Install rclone and fuse


sudo apt update
sudo apt install rclone
sudo apt install fuse

2, Manually mount


rclone mount iCloudDrive: /path_to_fold/iCloudDrive --vfs-cache-mode full

Mounts iCloud Drive to /path_to_fold/iCloudDrive
--vfs-cache-mode: Uses Virtual File System (VFS) cache mode to optimize file operations
full: Caches all file operations, including reads and writes.
- This mode provides higher performance, especially for frequently accessed and modified files, ensuring that all file operations are performed locally, which improves the handling of large files.
- Alternative modes:
  - off: No caching is used, and all file operations are executed directly on the cloud.
  - minimal: Only caches a portion of the file being read.
  - writes: Caches file write operations, but does not use caching for read operations.

3, Create a system service to automatically mount


sudo nano /etc/systemd/system/rclone-mount-icloud.service

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