rclone About

rclone about reports storage quota information for a remote — total space, used space, free space, trashed items, and other backend-specific metrics. It's the equivalent of running df -h on a cloud storage provider.

Quick Summary

Not all backends support about. It works well on Google Drive, OneDrive, Dropbox, and similar providers with quota concepts. Object storage (S3, GCS) typically doesn't support it because storage is effectively unlimited.

Basic Syntax

rclone about REMOTE: [flags]

# Check Google Drive usage
rclone about gdrive:

# Check OneDrive usage
rclone about onedrive:

Output Example

Total:   15 GiB
Used:    8.2 GiB
Free:    6.8 GiB
Trashed: 512 MiB

Key Flags

Flag	Description
--json	Output as JSON (for scripts)
--full	Show additional backend-specific fields

Practical Examples

Check Drive Quota

rclone about gdrive:

JSON Output for Monitoring

rclone about gdrive: --json

{
  "total": 16106127360,
  "used": 8804682752,
  "free": 7301444608,
  "trashed": 536870912
}

Storage Alert Script

storage-alert.sh

#!/bin/bash
# Alert when storage exceeds 90%
FREE=$(rclone about gdrive: --json | jq '.free')
TOTAL=$(rclone about gdrive: --json | jq '.total')
USED_PCT=$((100 - (FREE * 100 / TOTAL)))

if [ "$USED_PCT" -gt 90 ]; then
  echo "WARNING: Google Drive is ${USED_PCT}% full"
fi

Check All Remotes

for remote in $(rclone listremotes); do
  echo "=== ${remote} ==="
  rclone about "${remote}" 2>/dev/null || echo "  about not supported"
  echo
done

Backend Support

Backend	about Supported	Notes
Google Drive	✅	Shows total, used, free, trashed
OneDrive	✅	Shows total, used, free, trashed
Dropbox	✅	Shows total, used, free
S3 / Wasabi / Minio	❌	No quota concept
Google Cloud Storage	❌	No quota concept
Azure Blob	❌	No quota concept
SFTP	✅	Shows disk space of remote server
Local	✅	Shows local disk space

Common Pitfalls

Pitfall	Consequence	Prevention
Using on S3/GCS	Error or empty output	Use rclone size instead for object storage
Expecting path-level usage	about reports account-level quota	Use rclone size remote:path for path-level metrics
Shared/team drives	May show team quota, not personal	Check backend docs for shared drive behavior

What's Next

Examples with Output

1. Check Google Drive Quota

View total, used, and free space on your account. Command:

rclone about gdrive:

Output:

Total:   15 GiB
Used:    10.2 GiB
Free:    4.8 GiB
Trashed: 500 MiB

2. Check S3 Bucket Usage

Identify how many bytes are currently stored in a bucket. Command:

rclone about s3-backup:my-files

Output:

Total:   unlimited
Used:    250 GiB
Free:    unlimited

3. Check Local Disk Space

Use rclone for consistent cross-platform disk management. Command:

rclone about /var/data

Output:

Total:   100 GiB
Used:    85 GiB
Free:    15 GiB

4. Machine-readable quota output

Integrate quota checks into custom monitoring scripts. Command:

rclone about remote: --json

Output:

{"total":16106127360,"used":10952166604,"free":5153960756,"trashed":524288000}

5. Check shared drive quota

Verify available space when collaborating on a shared remote. Command:

rclone about team-remote:SharedFolder

Output:

Total:   100 TiB
Used:    20 TiB
Free:    80 TiB