Installing

curl -fsSL https://diskpush.com/install.sh | sh

Installs the CLI, and the desktop app when the machine has a desktop session to run it on.

Everything lands under your home directory. No root, no package manager, no system files touched — a script piped into a shell should not be asking for sudo, and this one never does.

Options

curl -fsSL https://diskpush.com/install.sh | sh -s -- --cli-only

Option	Effect
`--cli-only`	Never install the desktop app.
`--desktop`	Install it even where no desktop session was detected.
`--version X`	Install a specific release instead of the latest.
`--prefix DIR`	Install root. Default `~/.local`.

What it decides, and why

Whether to install the desktop app. On macOS, always. On Linux, when DISPLAY, WAYLAND_DISPLAY or XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP is set. Over SSH into a server there is nothing to show a window on, and downloading 100MB of Electron onto a machine that will never run it is not a kindness. --desktop overrides this, for the case where you are setting up a machine you will later sit at.

Where the CLI's runtime comes from. A desktop install carries the CLI inside the app bundle and runs it on the Node that ships with Electron, so diskpush works on the command line with no system Node at all. A CLI-only install is a plain Node program and needs Node 24 or newer.

What it writes

~/.local/bin/diskpush                              the CLI
~/.local/share/diskpush/app/                       the desktop app (if installed)
~/.local/share/diskpush/cli/                       the CLI bundle (CLI-only installs)
~/.local/share/diskpush/manifest.json              what was installed
~/.local/share/diskpush/uninstall.sh               how to remove it
~/.local/share/applications/diskpush.desktop       the menu entry
~/.local/share/icons/hicolor/512x512/apps/         the icon

Nothing outside your home directory.

Updating

Both the CLI and the desktop app check for a newer release on start and install it.

The CLI checks at most once every six hours, then re-runs your command on the version it just installed. It stays quiet when there is nothing to do, when you are offline, and when output is machine-readable — --json never carries update chatter into something's stdin.

The desktop app applies an update on launch but waits to restart while a transfer is running; a version bump is not worth abandoning a transfer for.

Turn it off with DISKPUSH_NO_AUTO_UPDATE=1.

diskpush update      # or check now, explicitly

Updating and removing

diskpush update      # upgrade in place
diskpush uninstall   # remove it

Both read the manifest the installer wrote rather than guessing. uninstall runs the script left beside it, so removal is exact and works with no network — a command that needs the internet to uninstall itself is one you cannot get rid of on a plane.

Neither touches your configuration. Connections, profiles and job history live in ~/.config/diskpush and survive both, so reinstalling picks up where you left off. Delete that directory yourself if you want it gone.

Manual installation

Piping a script into a shell is a real decision. The script is short enough to read first — it is scripts/install.sh in the repository, and the URL serves that same file.

If you would rather not:

Artifact	Notes
`DiskPush-<version>-linux-amd64.deb`	Debian/Ubuntu. Menu entry included, and it carries the fix for electron-builder's chrome-sandbox permissions on Ubuntu 24.04+. Needs root.
`DiskPush-<version>-linux-x86_64.AppImage`	One file, no install. `chmod +x` and run.
`DiskPush-<version>-linux-x64.tar.gz`	The app as a directory. What the installer uses.
`diskpush-cli-<version>-linux-x64.tar.gz`	CLI only. Needs Node 24+.

All are on the releases page, with a SHA256SUMS to check them against.

Requirements

DiskPush drives rsync and SSH rather than reimplementing them:

sudo apt install rsync openssh-client   # Debian / Ubuntu
brew install rsync                      # macOS, for a modern version

diskpush doctor reports what it found.

Platforms

Linux x86_64 today. macOS and arm64 builds need a runner that can produce them; the CLI builds on both. Windows is not supported yet — see rsync-options.md for why native Windows rsync is not equivalent.