Robert Triggs / Android Authority
Love it or hate it, AI features are winding their way into virtually every aspect of our digital lives — from documents to music playlists, there’s no escape. Concerns about privacy and AI scraping have already prompted my colleagues to seek more privacy-focused alternatives to Google Drive, and I can’t say I blame them. In fact, I’ve been spurred into joining them.
Now, I must state that the easiest way to sidestep some AI concerns is to simply disable Google Drive’s AI features under Settings > Privacy > Manage Workplace smart features and turn off the toggle. Simple enough. However, I am also constantly running afoul of Google Drive’s storage limits, and I refuse to spring for the expensive 2TB plan. While I’ve always been somewhat bothered by entrusting my documents to a third-party, AI nonsense is finally the push I need to move another one of my services out of the cloud and back under my control.
Do you want Google Drive to generate an automatic overview of your folders, files, and their contents? 4390 votes Yes, it helps me organize those files 13 % Yes, but I'd like some restrictions 29 % I'm against it entirely 58 %
Document hosting is the primary purview of the NAS, of course, and there have long been extremely popular options for managing your documents both inside and outside your home network. Synology’s whole sales pitch hinges on easy access to your files, and it remains one of the easiest plug-and-play options to get started. Similarly, NextCloud and OwnCloud are probably the biggest names when it comes to installing third-party tools on your own hardware.
Robert Triggs / Android Authority
But these options have become rather cluttered with add-ons and extra tools over the years. They’re more than just file managers, offering various addons like Microsoft integrations, while Nextcloud even boasts AI assistant capabilities as part of its collaborative Hub package. Those tools might be really useful for some, but there are slightly more stripped-back options that bring us closer to self-hosting the traditional aspects of Google’s file manager. My only other requirement is an app for Android and iOS to take the effort out of backups and syncing — no messing around with automated pushes or Syncthing for me, thank you.
This narrowed my search down to Seafile and Twake Drive. Both have hosted and enterprise options, but can also be self-hosted to ensure that all your data remains entirely your own. I was going to try Twake first. However, I had issues building the Docker setup, and it looks like Twake’s collaborative focus is probably surplus to my requirements. I settled on Seafile.
Seafile vs Google Drive: The good and the bad
Robert Triggs / Android Authority
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