Rebel Backup For Mac

Sometimes it feels like you can’t go five minutes on the Internet without someone reminding you to back up your data, and then back up those backups if you can. While the advice can get annoying, it is very well founded. Most of us are one hardware fault away from losing important files, and we don’t have to be.

Rebel Backup is a user-friendly app designed to work together with cloud storage services such as Dropbox and Google Drive. It allows you to encrypt and back up files and folders with a single click, sending them to your designated sync directory, and from there to the cloud.

In a nutshell, this is how the app works: when you start it up, you need to create one or more backup jobs. You will have to select the file or folder you want to include, as well as the destination, and then specify if it should be encrypted or not.

Backups are only created manually, giving you more control over what is saved. If new files are added to the folder, they will be included in the next backup as well.

Naturally, if you want data to be sent to your Dropbox or Google Drive, you will have to set these services’ sync folders as the backup destination. The files should then be uploaded automatically, provided the client applications are running.

If you prefer, you can also backup your data locally. At the very least, however, make sure the files are sent to a different drive, as the backup will be mostly useless otherwise.

If you choose to use encryption, the process is very secure. The app relies on a secret key that is only accessible on your machine and saved in your Mac’s keychain. The secret key can be exported if you want to decrypt backups on another computer.

For those interested in the details, Rebel Backup uses the libsodium crypto library, specifically the XChaCha20-Poly1305 cryptographic construction, which does not limit the size of encrypted files.

In short, Rebel Backup is a fairly straightforward application, particularly suitable for users who need a quick way to encrypt and backup files. We ran into no issues while testing it, so if it sounds like something you’d be interested in, go ahead and try it out.