Alpha software, not for production data. Bugs can cause data loss, formats may change without migration, and the cryptography has not been independently audited. Keep your own backups and check that you can restore from them.
Varsto

Alpha.6: the source is public, and every platform builds in the cloud

Since alpha-0 the alphas have added most of what the plan calls the core: S3 and rclone storages, sharing with another user by a sealed key, hybrid post-quantum signatures and key exchange, durability policies that warn in time, peer-to-peer transfer between your own devices, compression before encryption, Strongroom folders behind a FIDO2 security key, a printable recovery kit, and an MCP server so an assistant can read and reorganise exactly the folders you grant. Alpha.6 is about the project around that code.

The source is public

The repository lives at github.com/janttsu/varsto under the PolyForm Shield License 1.0.0: source-available, not open source. Read it, build it, report what breaks in the issue tracker. The history was rewritten before publication so that it carries no personal paths or addresses; if you cloned an earlier private copy, clone again.

Every platform is built by a machine that did not exist an hour earlier

  • macOS and iOS build on GitHub Actions on Apple Silicon runners: the test suite, the native Varsto.app with its own window, menu-bar item and bundled command line, and the iOS shell for the Simulator, which is launched there and photographed. A tagged release gets the macOS zip attached automatically.
  • Linux, Windows and Android build and test on short-lived cloud machines created by a script, used once and deleted: the full test suite on a real Ubuntu, the Windows zip installed and exercised on a real Windows Server, the Android APK built with the SDK and NDK and then run in an emulator.

No build depends on a developer's laptop any more, which also means every package on the download page comes from a documented, repeatable path.

A file view first

The interface was redone: a sidebar with a folder tree, a Files view with breadcrumbs, state squares and a details pane, and a phone mode in which tables become cards and the navigation moves to the bottom. On a phone a folder is added by name alone; the device chooses where it lives, so you never type a directory. There is also a guarded "start over on this device" in Settings for the alpha, and the overview suggests where idle files would be cheaper to keep, from Varsto's own last-used record and open price data.

Still alpha

Nothing here changes the warning on every page: the cryptography has not been audited, the format may still change, and a bug can destroy data. Use test data, keep your own backups, and read the failure model before trusting it with anything else.