[DOCUMENTATION] User Guides

[EhudKirsh]

I thought of creating this post for users to write guides in, in case users find gaps in the documentation,
such as how to connect complicated OAuth cloud drives.
@axpnet, you're welcome to add these to their dedicated pages like https://docs.aeroftp.app/providers/onedrive.

[EhudKirsh]

How to connect OneDrive to AeroFTP (and Rclone with custom Client ID & Secret):

Achieving what the title of this comment says was challenging because there wasn't sufficient guidance on it.

For Rclone, the benefit of a custom OAuth Client ID & Secret is to not be throttled by using the same details at the same time as other users. For AeroFTP, it seems like the only option to connect OAuth cloud drives. I actually prefer the latter, because with AeroFTP you know for sure that you have your own OAuth Client ID & Secret working when connected, while Rclone sometimes fails silently and uses an old token with its default Client ID if you enter your OAuth Client ID & Secret incorrectly.

Now that I managed to generate OAuth Client ID and Secret for OneDrive, I'd like to offer guidance on how I managed this.
So here are the steps:

1. Log into https://portal.azure.com/#view/Microsoft_AAD_RegisteredApps/ApplicationsListBlade with your personal Microsoft account

This link SHOULD allow logging in to Azure without giving Microsoft any payment card details and without needing to subscribe to any Azure services. At any rate, I suggest not using Azure services like creating cloud resources such as virtual machines or databases to not risk getting charged, if all you want here is to connect OneDrive to AeroFTP or Rclone.

2. Click on '➕ New registration' at the top-left

a. Give it a name like Rclone and AeroFTP 🚀, but don't enter symbols like "&" which aren't allowed. The names of these apps aren't secret unless you write any secrets in them, so don't. The details that you keep for yourself are the Client ID and Secret in a moment.

b. Select 'Any Entra ID Tenant + Personal Microsoft accounts' for the 'Supported account types'.

c. For the Redirect URI, select 'Public client/native (mobile & desktop)' and enter http://127.0.0.1:27154/callback for AeroFTP OR select 'Web' and enter http://localhost:53682 for Rclone. Azure doesn't let entering 127.0.0.1 when selecting 'Web',
and 127.0.0.1 is what AeroFTP's uses for its Redirect URI. That's totally fine, these are just different formats.

Click 'Register'. Don't worry if you didn't complete steps b and c here, you can do them later.

3. See the menu of the app(s) you created

Click on ☰ at the top-left, and drag 'Microsoft Entra ID' all the way to the top so it'll be in quick access for you for next time and click on it.
You can also see 'Microsoft Entra ID' at https://portal.azure.com/#home. In the left bar, hover over 'App registrations' and click on the hollow star ⭐ that appears on its right to favorite it to keep it in quick access for next time as well.
You can collapse the 'Manage', 'Monitoring' and 'Troubleshooting + Support' menus now that 'App registrations' is expanded in your 'Favorites'. Clicking on it takes you to https://portal.azure.com/#view/Microsoft_AAD_IAM/ActiveDirectoryMenuBlade/~/RegisteredApps.

Click on the 'All applications' tab on the left to see the app(s) you created. Click on the app you just created or wish to edit.

4. Settings of the new app in Azure

a. As you enter the 'Overview' tab, hover over the value of 'Application (client) ID' and click on the 'Copy to clipboard' button that appears to its right. This is your OAuth Client ID.

b. In the 'Manage' tab on the left, hover over 'Branding & properties', 'Authentication (Preview)', 'API permissions' and 'Certificates & secrets', and click on the star ⭐ to the right of each to add them to 'Favorites'. These are the only ones that we need to care about.
You can collapse the 'Manage' tab now. 'Branding & properties' lets you change the name of this new app if you want from step 2 part a.

c. In 'Authentication (Preview)' you can click on '➕ Add Redirect URI' to add both the Redirect URIs of AeroFTP and Rclone.
Use the same details as in step 2 part c. You can also edit these Redirect URIs and delete them here. Clicking on 'Supported accounts' allows you to select 'Any Entra ID Tenant + Personal Microsoft accounts' if you didn't before in step 2 part b.

d. In 'API permissions' click '➕ Add a permission', click on 'Microsoft Graph', click on 'Delegated permissions' and search and add the following: Files.Read, Files.ReadWrite, Files.Read.All, Files.ReadWrite.All, offline_access, User.Read and Sites.Read.All.
I found these in https://rclone.org/onedrive/#creating-client-id-for-onedrive-personal, but I'm writing this guide here to further clarify the process and also cover AeroFTP.

e. In 'Certificates & secrets' click on '➕ New client secret', add whatever description you like and choose an expiry date.
The longest possible seems to be 2 years. The Secret ID isn't what we're after. We're interested in copying its Value,
which is the Client Secret. You need to copy it now because it will not be possible to read or copy it later. You can always delete and create new client secrets here if you want to extend the expiry date or generate a new Client Secret if you forget your old one.
You may wish to store your Client Secret in a password manager.

5. Now you can enter your OneDrive Client ID & Secret into Rclone and AeroFTP

In Rclone, you can enter rclone config and then n (New) or e (Edit) to enter these details for a OneDrive remote.
For AeroFTP, it's in the '☁ Cloud Storage' tab in the 'Add Service' page. For each, expect a new tab to open in your browser.
Just log in to your personal Microsoft account in this newly opened browser tab, and that's it, you'll connect OneDrive to Rclone and AeroFTP via your own custom OAuth Client ID & Secret. I write 'personal' Microsoft account because if you try this with a university Microsoft account, you will likely not have the admin permission to do all of this.

Part of the hint that this works is that you'll receive a "New app(s) connected to your Microsoft account" email from
<account-security-noreply@accountprotection.microsoft.com>. Clicking on its blue 'Manage your apps' button takes you to https://account.live.com/consent/Manage which shows you which apps you've given access to some of your data that's stored at your Microsoft account over the years. You can Ctrl+F search for the name of the app you made like Rclone and AeroFTP 🚀.
You'll also see rclone there if you search for it as well.

[EhudKirsh]

As for connecting Google Drive, Box and Dropbox to Rclone and AeroFTP, I find Rclone's official guides sufficiently easy to follow.
Here are links to them:

• https://rclone.org/drive/#making-your-own-client-id
• https://rclone.org/box/#get-your-own-box-app-id
• https://rclone.org/dropbox/#get-your-own-dropbox-app-id

Connecting Google Drive to AeroFTP was discussed in #121 where @axpnet wrote a detailed guide on how to connect Google Drive specifically to AeroFTP.

The main difference between setting these OAuth cloud drives for Rclone VS AeroFTP is that Rclone and AeroFTP use different Redirect URIs, which need to be entered in the websites of these cloud drives.

It is sometimes the case that AeroFTP and Rclone can share the same Client ID and Secret as each other if the same user-created "app" accepts multiple Redirect URIs, as is in the example above with OneDrive.

This might sound complicated to beginners, but I promise that these guides are simple enough to follow,
and they are set-and-forget.

[axpnet]

Ehud, this is a genuinely useful guide, thank you for taking the time to write it out step by step. The OneDrive / Azure App registration flow is exactly the kind of thing that is hard to get right from the official docs alone, and walking through the redirect URIs for both AeroFTP (http://127.0.0.1:27154/callback) and Rclone (http://localhost:53682) side by side is the part people get stuck on. The note about copying the secret Value (not the Secret ID) at creation time, because it cannot be read back later, is the single most common trap, so it is good to see it called out.

The Google Drive / Box / Dropbox pointers to the Rclone guides, plus the cross-reference to the Google Drive walkthrough in #121, round it out nicely.

I would like to fold the OneDrive guide into its dedicated page at https://docs.aeroftp.app/providers/onedrive, crediting you as the author. I will adapt the wording slightly to match the docs style and keep the AeroFTP-specific redirect URI front and center, but the substance and the credit stay yours. I will link back to this discussion from the page so the full context and the Rclone-side details remain available.

Thanks again, this is the kind of contribution that makes the docs better for everyone.

[EhudKirsh]

It’s worth noting that pCloud Drive disabled the ability that users had by default to set up OAuth Client ID and Secret by themselves at https://docs.pcloud.com/my_apps/.
You can see this by clicking on the ‘New app’ button, which returns ‘Temporary unavailable, please contact support team.’

I managed to create an OAuth app for pCloud Drive by emailing support@pcloud.com. To my knowledge, this is the only cloud drive where generating credentials requires emailing the provider’s helpdesk team. support@pcloud.com claims that they disabled this to prevent abuse, which they encountered in the past. support@pcloud.com asked for the following details to generate the OAuth Client ID and Secret for me:

• AppName: This can be whatever string you want, as long as neither you nor others have already taken that name.
  You can even start by generating a random number.
• Folder Access: All folders or Private. I answered with All folders.
• Write access: Yes or No. I answered Yes.
• Reason for needing this and my plan for using it: Connecting to AeroFTP via the http://localhost:17384/callback Redirect URI.

You can change all of these details manually afterwards from https://docs.pcloud.com/my_apps/.

support@pcloud.com never got back to me by email to confirm that my OAuth app is ready.
I simply checked https://docs.pcloud.com/my_apps/ after a few days, and it was there.

By the way, there's no Redirect URI in https://rclone.org/pcloud; this means that it’s currently not possible to use the custom Client ID and Secret for pCloud Drive in Rclone. This is yet another advantage that AeroFTP currently has over Rclone.