Why Developers Forked AList and Created OpenList

Imagine typical workday chaos. Backups pile up in an S3 bucket, personal archives sit on Yandex Disk, a couple of documents are lost somewhere in Google Drive, and your home NAS runs an SMB share. To reach the right file, you have to keep a dozen browser tabs open or spin up a bunch of specialized utilities.

For a long time, AList remained the go-to utility for situations like this. This Go application mounts almost any storage into a unified file system with a clean web interface and a built-in WebDAV server. But recently, a trust crisis emerged around the project, related to closing part of the code and an unclear development roadmap. In response, the OpenList creators forked the original repository, locked in the AGPL-3.0 license, and handed control over to the community.

Let's look at what the project offers now, how it's useful, and how it helps organize scattered files.

What OpenList Can Do

At its core, it's a single binary that acts as a layer between your drives and the user. You connect cloud provider accounts in the admin panel, and get a unified file catalog as output.

The list of supported backends is impressive. Beyond standard options like local disk, S3, FTP, SFTP, SMB, and WebDAV, the utility works with dozens of cloud services:

• Yandex Disk and Google Drive
• OneDrive and SharePoint
• Dropbox and Mega.nz
• ProtonDrive and GitHub
• Chinese services like Aliyundrive, 123pan, BaiduNetdisk, and 115

What's more, the app doesn't just display a file list. The web interface includes a handy viewer. PDF documents, Markdown, source code in various programming languages, and office files (.docx, .xlsx, .pptx) can be read right in the browser. Videos and audio come with a player that supports subtitles and lyrics. Images can be browsed in gallery mode.

Practical Benefits

The project's strongest feature is streaming everything via WebDAV. This opens up several use cases right away.

Media Server Without Gigabytes on Local Disk

You can connect your Google Drive or Yandex Disk to the utility, enable WebDAV, and point your media player (like Infuse, Kodi, or VLC on your TV) to the address. Video files stream directly from the cloud. The app redirects HTTP requests (does a 302 redirect) or proxies the stream, so the local server doesn't fill up RAM and disk with heavy media content.

Direct File Transfer Between Clouds

Usually, to move 20 gigabytes from S3 to Google Drive, you have to download the archive to your laptop and upload it back. If you run OpenList on a VPS with a good connection, it will move files between different providers within its own interface.

Ready-Made File Hosting for Your Team

Need to give a client or colleague a link to download a large file? The interface generates direct permanent links. You can password-protect individual folders, set up access rights for different users, or allow anonymous file uploads to a specific directory.

Technical Details and Deployment

The project is written in Go, so the compiled binary consumes minimal resources. For a simple setup with a couple of connected drives, 100-200 megabytes of RAM is plenty. The utility runs great even on the cheapest single-board computers or weak VPS instances.

The easiest way to deploy the service is Docker. Launching it comes down to one command:

After startup, the web panel is available on port 5244. The admin password is generated in the container logs on first launch, but it's easy to reset with the command docker exec -it openlist ./openlist admin.

If you don't have a server at hand, the authors suggest an option with proxying through Cloudflare Workers, although for full functionality it's still more convenient to run a container.

The Bottom Line

The fork turned out to be alive and well. The team regularly releases updates, fixes breaking APIs for Chinese and international clouds, and accepts pull requests.

You should definitely try OpenList if you're tired of switching between different cloud services or want to build your own streaming hack for a home theater. It saves time and eliminates the need to keep extra software on your work devices.