# Seafile — Self-Hosted File Sync & Share Platform

> Seafile is a high-performance, self-hosted file synchronization and sharing platform with client-side encryption, versioning, and team collaboration.

## Install

Save as a script file and run:

# Seafile — Self-Hosted File Sync & Share Platform

## Quick Use
```bash
docker compose up -d  # Using the official seafile-docker compose file
# Access http://localhost:80 and log in with admin credentials from .env
```

## Introduction
Seafile is a self-hosted file synchronization and sharing platform built for speed, reliability, and security. Written in C and Python, it delivers superior sync performance compared to alternatives and supports client-side encryption for sensitive data libraries.

## What Seafile Does
- Synchronizes files across Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS, and Android clients
- Provides file versioning with full history and snapshot-based restore
- Encrypts individual libraries on the client side before upload to the server
- Enables team collaboration with shared libraries, wiki pages, and file comments
- Offers a web-based file manager with preview for documents, images, and videos

## Architecture Overview
The Seafile server consists of multiple C-based daemons: seafile-server handles file storage and sync, seahub (Django) provides the web UI and REST API. Files are stored as content-addressed blocks on the filesystem or S3-compatible backends. MySQL or SQLite stores metadata. This block-level deduplication reduces storage usage significantly.

## Self-Hosting & Configuration
- Deploy with Docker Compose using the official seafile-docker repository
- Requires MySQL/MariaDB for metadata and a volume or S3 bucket for file storage
- Configure `seahub_settings.py` for email, quota, branding, and auth backends
- Enable LDAP or SAML for enterprise single sign-on integration
- Set up background tasks via `seafile-background-tasks` for indexing and cleanup

## Key Features
- Block-level file sync transfers only changed portions, making it extremely fast
- Client-side encryption ensures the server never sees plaintext file content
- File locking prevents conflicts when teams edit documents simultaneously
- Built-in online document editing with LibreOffice or OnlyOffice integration
- Audit logging and compliance features for enterprise governance requirements

## Comparison with Similar Tools
- **Nextcloud** — broader app ecosystem but heavier; Seafile is faster at pure file sync
- **Syncthing** — peer-to-peer sync; Seafile adds a central server with web UI and sharing
- **ownCloud** — similar feature set; Seafile has superior sync speed due to C backend
- **MinIO** — object storage API; Seafile provides user-facing file management and sync
- **Dropbox** — commercial cloud storage; Seafile keeps all data on your own servers

## FAQ
**Q: How fast is Seafile compared to Nextcloud?**
A: Seafile's C-based sync engine and block-level deduplication make it significantly faster for large file syncs, especially over slow connections.

**Q: Can I encrypt specific folders?**
A: Yes. Each library can be individually encrypted with a password. Encryption happens on the client before data reaches the server.

**Q: Does it support S3 storage backends?**
A: Yes. Seafile can store file blocks on any S3-compatible object storage including AWS S3, MinIO, and Ceph.

**Q: Is there a free version?**
A: The Community Edition is free and open-source. The Professional Edition adds advanced features like full-text search, audit, and antivirus integration.

## Sources
- https://github.com/haiwen/seafile
- https://manual.seafile.com/

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Source: https://tokrepo.com/en/workflows/bb757141-39c1-11f1-9bc6-00163e2b0d79
Author: Script Depot