Google Drive’s AI nonsense finally pushed me to self-host my documents

Love it or hate it, AI features are winding their way into virtually every aspect of our digital lives — from documents to music playlists, there’s no escape. Concerns about privacy and AI scraping have already prompted my colleagues to seek more privacy-focused alternatives to Google Drive, and I can’t say I blame them. In fact, I’ve been spurred into joining them.

Now, I must state that the easiest way to sidestep some AI concerns is to simply disable Google Drive’s AI features under Settings > Privacy > Manage Workplace smart features and turn off the toggle. Simple enough. However, I am also constantly running afoul of Google Drive’s storage limits, and I refuse to spring for the expensive 2TB plan. While I’ve always been somewhat bothered by entrusting my documents to a third-party, AI nonsense is finally the push I need to move another one of my services out of the cloud and back under my control.

Document hosting is the primary purview of the NAS, of course, and there have long been extremely popular options for managing your documents both inside and outside your home network. Synology’s whole sales pitch hinges on easy access to your files, and it remains one of the easiest plug-and-play options to get started. Similarly, NextCloud and OwnCloud are probably the biggest names when it comes to installing third-party tools on your own hardware.

But these options have become rather cluttered with add-ons and extra tools over the years. They’re more than just file managers, offering various addons like Microsoft integrations, while Nextcloud even boasts AI assistant capabilities as part of its collaborative Hub package. Those tools might be really useful for some, but there are slightly more stripped-back options that bring us closer to self-hosting the traditional aspects of Google’s file manager. My only other requirement is an app for Android and iOS to take the effort out of backups and syncing — no messing around with automated pushes or Syncthing for me, thank you.

This narrowed my search down to Seafile and Twake Drive. Both have hosted and enterprise options, but can also be self-hosted to ensure that all your data remains entirely your own. I was going to try Twake first. However, I had issues building the Docker setup, and it looks like Twake’s collaborative focus is probably surplus to my requirements. I settled on Seafile.

Seafile is lightweight enough to run on my NAS and even on a Raspberry Pi I used for testing, and — most importantly — easy to use. After installation and logging in with my preset credentials, moving swathes of data off my laptop was as simple as dragging and dropping files and even folders into the web UI, just like Drive. You can create specific libraries, manage multiple users with private libraries and quotas, and share folders and files between users. When it comes to file management, this is right up there with the best services out there.

If you’re willing to expose your service to the internet, you can even create external shareable links with password protection and time-limited access. I haven’t done this, as simply dialing in via TailScale is the more secure option for accessing my documents when away from home. For more advanced users, the admin panel lets you monitor storage space, manage connected devices, add new users, and more — all very helpful if you want to bring the whole family over from relying on the cloud.

The feature set is brilliant, and many of these tools are available in the mobile app as well. You can share files directly from your Seafile drive into messaging apps or office tools for editing, manage cloud files, and even set up auto-backups. However, the “share to user” function doesn’t work in the app, which feels like a bit of an oversight, but you can still view libraries and files that others have shared with you.

Speaking of backups, you can specify multiple folders to back up, including a dedicated background photo backup you can use to replace Google Photos (well, sort of). The backup is one-way; changes aren’t synced if you delete the file in the cloud, so it’s gone on your device. That’s fine for me (it’s how Drive works), but it might not be what everyone is looking for, especially for pictures.

Now, one thing that Google Drive does really well is document integration — simply click on a text or spreadsheet file, and it’ll take you straight to Docs or Sheets to begin editing and even collaborating with others. Seafile has SeaDocs, which works a bit like this, but with some important caveats. First, it only works with text documents; you can’t open .xls or other spreadsheets, as far as I can tell, and you can’t open the popular .docx format directly either.

Instead, SeaDocs only supports the custom .sdoc format, which you can create from within the browser app, or there’s the option to right-click to convert existing doc files, but that’s hardly ideal. Seafile also supports editing Excalidraw and Markdown files in the app and the web browser, which is nice. Overall, however, the editing experience is definitely not as refined as Google’s office suite or some of the other third-party options you’ll find out there. However, it does support integration with LibreOffice Online and OnlyOffice, which would be more robust, but the setup documentation is daunting.

Having only played around with Seafile for a few days, it has successfully ticked off most of the requirements I had when looking to replace Google Drive. It’s fast and intuitive to use, offers a robust set of file management and sharing features, and comes with an Android app to boot. It even supports granular file permissions, external link sharing, multiple users, and it’s open source, which is always nice.

However, as with any service replacement, there are things you miss. Document collaboration and quick editing are undoubtedly better in Drive due to the wider range of supported formats. In addition, setting up the latest version of Seafile was not super easy. The configuration file alone is 86 lines long, which is far too much for a casual user to sift through and understand, at least without reading through the rather verbose documentation. While the Docker setup for the older versions is quite simple, installing version 13 and all the potential extras like SeaDocs, Notifications, and a more powerful external office editing suite is such a mammoth task that it almost makes me want to rush back to Google. Sometimes, self-hosting can be more trouble than it’s worth, and Seafile is really straddling that fine line. Installing OwnCloud would have been much simpler.

Along those lines, arguably the biggest loss with self-hosting or any cloud alternative is the non-trivial setup required to migrate your data and make it accessible from anywhere you might need it. Exposing services directly to the internet is always a risk, and I’m unwilling to risk the potentially sensitive information stored in my documents. While there are a few options to help you access self-hosted documents online, I’d encourage you to do your own research, so you really know what you’re getting into. For what it’s worth, Tailscale is my preferred way to quickly VPN into my home network while away without exposing services directly to the web. Again, that’s another setup on the complexity ladder that might quite rightly turn users away.

Still, I like Seafile, and having gone through a bit of pain to set it up, I plan to stick with it for storing my more important documents locally, at least until I can find a really good reason to try something else. If you’re looking to escape the AI and privacy concerns of hosting your files at one of the big cloud providers, you can see how to get started with Seafile right here. If you’re looking for something to replace an even broader range of Google tools, it might be worth trying to get Twake Drive running.