A terminal UI for rsync 🔄

A terminal UI for rsync — manage reusable profiles, preview a transfer as a structured diff before running it, and watch a live run with progress and cancellation. All from the terminal, including over SSH where a desktop GUI can't reach.

Contents

• Why
• Features
• Install
• Quickstart
• Headless & scheduling
• Keybindings
• Configuration
• Contributing
• Acknowledgements
• License

Why

rsync is the right tool for backups and syncs, but its flags are easy to get wrong and a single mistake can delete data. lazyrsync keeps you in the terminal while giving you the safety of a GUI: save your transfers once, see exactly what a run will change before it runs, and keep destructive flags behind a gate.

Features

Profiles & tasks

Save a Source → Destination pair once and rerun it with a keystroke.

Dry-run preview

Press p and watch the transfer resolve into a +/~/- diff with stats. Nothing is written until you say so.

Live run & cancel

r runs it — a progress bar fills with byte and file counts. Press c to stop mid-transfer.

Flags & --delete gating

Toggle rsync's options as checkboxes. Flip on --delete and it makes you confirm before anything can be removed.

Over SSH

Put a user@host:/path on either side of a task and it runs over SSH — remote source downloads, remote destination uploads.

Snapshots

Keep numbered, hardlinked versions with --link-dest — each run writes the next directory (1/, 2/, …).

Install

rsync 3.1 or later must be on your $PATH — the preview needs --itemize-changes, the progress bar needs --info=progress2 (added in 3.1.0) and snapshots need --link-dest. The Homebrew and AUR packages pull rsync in; cargo install and cargo binstall do not.

On macOS 15.4 and later /usr/bin/rsync is openrsync, which has no --itemize-changes and no --info at all, and accepts --link-dest without reliably hardlinking. brew install rsync, then either put it ahead of /usr/bin on $PATH or set rsync_path (see Choosing which rsync runs). lazyrsync warns at startup when the rsync it finds is older than 3.1.

cargo install lazyrsync      # crates.io
cargo binstall lazyrsync     # prebuilt release binary
brew install lazyrsync       # Homebrew
yay -S lazyrsync             # AUR (Arch)

Or build from source:

cargo install --path .

Quickstart

lazyrsync            # launch the TUI

1. Press ] to switch to the Profiles sub-tab, then a to add a profile.
2. Back on Tasks (]), press a to add a task: an ID, an Action (Sync ⇄ Snapshot with ←/→), a Source, and a Destination. Either path may be local or a remote user@host:/path.
3. Press p to preview (dry-run) — you'll see the exact +/~/- changes and stats, and nothing is written.
4. Press r to run it. Watch progress in the Runs panel; press c to cancel.

A task is just Source → Destination, exactly like the rsync command line — no push/pull, no separate "remote" field. A trailing / on the Source copies its contents; without it, the folder itself is copied.

Headless & scheduling

Every profile you build in the TUI also runs without it, so the transfer you verified by hand is the exact one your scheduler runs at 2am.

lazyrsync list                        # profiles, task ids, resolved rsync commands
lazyrsync run backups                 # every task in the profile
lazyrsync run backups/photos-3f2a     # a single task, by id from `list`
lazyrsync run backups -n              # real dry run, changes nothing
lazyrsync run backups --yes           # required if any task uses --delete
lazyrsync run backups -v              # add rsync's own output for each task

Flags compose freely — lazyrsync run backups/photos-3f2a -n --yes is valid. (list prints the command with the TUI's --info=progress2 flag; a headless run drops it, since there's no progress bar to feed. A headless -n also drops --stats, which only the TUI's preview parser reads — you get rsync's itemized diff without the fourteen-line statistics block after every task.)

A real run passes rsync -q, so you get one line per task and nothing else — rsync still prints its errors, which is the only chatter worth mailing. -v/--verbose opts back into the full log per task. A dry run is never quiet: the itemized diff is the whole point of -n, so -n shows it with or without -v.

Why not just point cron at rsync directly? For a plain Sync you could. A Snapshot you can't: the numbered destination directory and the --link-dest chain are computed at run time by scanning the destination, so the command differs on every run — 1/ links against nothing, 2/ links against 1/, and so on. No static crontab line can express that. lazyrsync run resolves it fresh each time.

Ordering

Tasks run in the order lazyrsync list shows them, which is not the order they appear in profiles.toml — the loader sorts by recency. Check list before you schedule anything that assumes an order.

A failing task doesn't stop the rest. Every task gets its turn, then you get a summary and a non-zero exit code — so one broken source leaves less data unprotected than aborting the batch would.

Exit codes

Exit	Meaning
0	every task succeeded — or the profile has no tasks, which says so on stderr
1	refused: a task uses --delete and --yes was absent; nothing ran
2	no such profile or task id, or the config is missing or failed to load
3	a task couldn't be started, or was killed by a signal
n	the first failing task's own rsync exit code

rsync's exit 24 — source files vanished mid-transfer — counts as success.

rsync's own exit codes 1, 2 and 3 overlap these, so the status alone isn't always conclusive; read the message. A refusal always says nothing ran explicitly, and a task that never started ends its line with exit 3.

Output streams

Successful task lines and the success summary go to stdout. Failed task lines and the summary-when-something-failed go to stderr. So:

lazyrsync run backups >/dev/null

is completely silent when every task succeeds, and produces output only when something needs your attention — which is what makes cron's mail-on-output behaviour useful instead of noisy.

Each task gets one styled line: a counter, ✔/✗, the task's label, and then elapsed time if it worked or the exit code and the task id if it didn't — the id being what you paste back into lazyrsync run backups/<id> to retry just that one. Colour is dropped when the stream isn't a terminal, or when NO_COLOR is set — cron mail and journald get plain text.

A run where one task fails looks like this:

[1/3] ✔ Documents  1.5s
rsync: [sender] change_dir "/mnt/camera" failed: No such file or directory (2)
rsync error: some files/attrs were not transferred (see previous errors) (code 23) at main.c(1347) [sender=3.4.3]
[2/3] ✗ Photos     exit 23  photos-3f2a
[3/3] ✔ Music      0.0s

3 tasks: 2 ok, 1 failed

and like this under >/dev/null — which is exactly what cron mails you:

rsync: [sender] change_dir "/mnt/camera" failed: No such file or directory (2)
rsync error: some files/attrs were not transferred (see previous errors) (code 23) at main.c(1347) [sender=3.4.3]
[2/3] ✗ Photos     exit 23  photos-3f2a
3 tasks: 2 ok, 1 failed

Dry runs are never refused

lazyrsync run backups -n works on a profile containing --delete tasks without --yes, because --dry-run changes nothing and no destination directories are created. Preview first, then add --yes only to the command you actually schedule.

The --delete gate reads a task's --delete and --delete-excluded toggles. It does not parse the Advanced raw-args field, so a --delete written by hand there gets past the gate — the same caveat the TUI carries.

crontab

30 2 * * * /usr/bin/lazyrsync run backups >/dev/null

Add --yes only if the profile contains a --delete task.

systemd timer

Prefer this over cron: Persistent=true catches up a run missed while the machine was off, and journald keeps the output.

# ~/.config/systemd/user/lazyrsync-backups.service
[Service]
Type=oneshot
ExecStart=/usr/bin/lazyrsync run backups

# ~/.config/systemd/user/lazyrsync-backups.timer
[Timer]
OnCalendar=daily
Persistent=true

[Install]
WantedBy=timers.target

systemctl --user enable --now lazyrsync-backups.timer
journalctl --user -u lazyrsync-backups        # what the last run did

Per-task schedules

Because a task has its own address, each one can run on its own clock:

0 * * * *  /usr/bin/lazyrsync run backups/docs-a91c >/dev/null
30 2 * * 0 /usr/bin/lazyrsync run backups/photos-3f2a >/dev/null

Three things that break scheduled runs

• Use the absolute path. cron's PATH is minimal and won't find a binary in ~/.cargo/bin. command -v lazyrsync tells you what to write.
• SSH keys must be passwordless. Remote tasks run under ssh -o BatchMode=yes, so ssh fails fast instead of hanging on a prompt — but there's no ssh-agent under cron. Use a passwordless key, or set the task's SSH key file.
• Don't expect a scheduled run to tell you what moved. It prints one line per task and nothing else, so the exit code is the signal, and cron mails you on failure by itself. Add -v when you rerun by hand to debug.

Dated destinations need no extra flags — path fields expand {now:%Y-%m-%d}, {utcnow:…}, {hostname}, {user}, $VAR and ~ on every run, headless included. See Dynamic paths.

Keybindings

Press ? in the app for the full, context-aware list. The essentials:

Key	Action
1–4, Tab	Focus a rail panel (Runs / Tasks · Profiles / Flags / Filters)
]	Toggle the Tasks / Profiles sub-tab
j/k, ↑/↓	Move the cursor
space / enter	Select the task (or toggle the highlighted flag)
a	Add a task (or profile, on the Profiles sub-tab)
p	Preview (dry-run) the selected task
r / R	Run the selected task / run every task in the profile
e / s / i / x	Edit Basics / SSH / Filters / Advanced
d	Delete (confirm first)
V	Visual range (multi-select), then r/d acts on the block
c	Cancel the running job
/	Filter the list, or search the run output
q / Esc	Quit

Configuration

Profiles and settings live under $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/lazyrsync/ (typically ~/.config/lazyrsync/):

• profiles.toml — your profiles and tasks
• settings.toml — preferences (theme, hints, confirmation prompts)

If XDG_CONFIG_HOME is unset, the path falls back to ~/.config/lazyrsync/profiles.toml.

profiles.toml

The TUI writes this file for you, but it is a supported hand-editable format — useful for provisioning with Ansible or a dotfiles repo alongside headless runs. Every key below is shown with its default:

[[profile]]
name = "backups"                 # required
description = "nightly"          # ""

[[profile.task]]
label  = "photos"                # required
source = "/home/me/Pictures/"    # required
dest   = "/mnt/nas/pics/{now:%Y-%m-%d}/"
id     = "photos-3f2a"           # auto-generated from label + source/dest
action = "sync"                  # sync | snapshot

[profile.task.flags]
archive = true
compress = true
verbose = true
human = true
progress = true
partial = true
delete = false                   # destructive — mirrors deletions to dest
delete_excluded = false          # destructive — deletes excluded files at dest
backup = false
update = false
checksum = false
size_only = false
existing = false
ignore_existing = false
bwlimit_kbps = 0                 # 0 = unlimited
hardlinks = false
acls = false
xattrs = false

[profile.task.filters]
excludes = []
includes = []
exclude_from = ""
include_from = ""
files_from = ""
filter = []

[profile.task.ssh]
port = 22
keyfile = ""
extra = ""

[profile.task.advanced]
raw_args = ""

A profile holds one or more tasks; every section except [[profile]], label and source may be omitted. lazyrsync also writes created and last_files bookkeeping keys, which you can leave out.

source and dest accept the placeholders described under Dynamic paths — {now:%Y-%m-%d}, {utcnow:…}, {hostname}, {user}, $VAR, ${VAR} and ~ — resolved on every run.

With action = "snapshot", dest is the parent directory: lazyrsync picks the next numbered subdirectory and builds the --link-dest chain to the previous one at run time, so each run keeps a hardlinked version. See Snapshots.

Unknown keys are an error, not a warning. A misspelled key would otherwise be dropped in silence and its default used in place — for excludes that means running with no exclusions at all, which on a delete = true task mirrors away everything you meant to skip. lazyrsync instead refuses to load the file and names the offending key:

$ lazyrsync run backups
error: parsing /home/me/.config/lazyrsync/profiles.toml: TOML parse error at line 13, column 1
   |
13 | exclude = ["node_modules/"]
   | ^^^^^^^
unknown field `exclude`, expected one of `excludes`, `includes`, `exclude_from`, `include_from`, `files_from`, `filter`

settings.toml is parsed under the same rule. One consequence for both: a file written by a newer lazyrsync may fail to load on an older binary rather than being partially ignored.

Confirmation prompts

Every prompt has its own opt-out in settings.toml, all false by default:

Key	Silences
skip_delete_warning	the alert shown when you enable a task's delete flag
skip_run_confirm	the confirmation shown before a run starts
skip_remove_confirm	the confirmation shown before removing a profile or task

skip_run_confirm removes the last prompt before a transfer, including for tasks that use --delete.

Choosing which rsync runs

By default lazyrsync runs the first rsync on your $PATH. Point rsync_path in settings.toml at a specific binary to override that:

rsync_path = "/opt/homebrew/bin/rsync"

Useful on macOS 15.4+, where /usr/bin/rsync is openrsync and comes ahead of Homebrew's rsync on $PATH — and in any launch context with a minimal $PATH, such as cron. The configured binary is what the resolved command shown in the TUI and lazyrsync list reports.

Dynamic paths

Source and destination paths can contain placeholders, resolved every time the task runs — so one saved task can write to a new dated folder each night:

Placeholder	Expands to
{now}	today's date, 2026-07-27
{now:FORMAT}	any strftime format, e.g. {now:%Y/%m/%d} or {now:%H%M}
{utcnow}, {utcnow:FORMAT}	the same in UTC
{hostname}	this machine's hostname
{user}	the current user
$VAR, ${VAR}	an environment variable
~	your home directory

dest = "~/backups/{hostname}/{now:%Y-%m-%d}/"

Unknown placeholders, unset variables and a bare % are left exactly as typed, and the dry-run preview always shows the resolved path before anything runs. Braces and $ are escaped by doubling them — {{now}} is a folder literally named {now}, and $$HOME a folder named $HOME.

Contributing

See CONTRIBUTING.md for the build/test/lint commands, the module map, and the code + UI conventions.

Acknowledgements

• lazygit — the TUI whose keyboard-driven, panel-based workflow inspired this one.
• ratatui — the Rust TUI library lazyrsync is built on.

License

MIT.