This Free App Can Back Up Your Computer to Any Cloud Service

Backing up your files, ideally in multiple locations, is essential if you don’t want to lose any data. Your documents, images, and videos can disappear if anything happens to your computer. It’s also a good idea for at least one of your backups to be off-site—if a fire destroys your house it will probably also destroy your backup drive.

Most of us know this. The problem is that paying for a dedicated backup service feels silly if you’re already paying for cloud storage. Most cloud providers, after all, offer more space than the average user knows what to do with. Microsoft 365’s family plan comes with 6 terabytes of storage, for example, while Google One’s premium plan offers 2 TB. If you don’t need all that room for your documents and photos, why not put some of it to work for backups of your whole computer?

Duplicati is a free and open source application that lets you back up any computer to cloud services like Microsoft OneDrive and Google Drive. It supports over 20 storage options, so there’s a good chance you’ve already got a good backup destination. Even better: Duplicati encrypts your files before backing them up, meaning the cloud service provider you’re using has no ability whatsoever to access your data.

In our article about how to back up your digital life we briefly mentioned Duplicati as an alternative to commercial backup services, but we didn’t really dig into how to use it.

Getting Started With Duplicati

Duplicati is available for free. The homepage will ask you to sign up for an account, but you don’t need to do that. You can just download the application from the website or from Github. Installation is straightforward on both Windows and macOS.

After installation, you will notice a new icon in the Windows system tray or the Mac menu bar.