Install megatools with Homebrew

Project links

• Homepage

Commands and aliases

• megacopy
• megadf
• megadl
• megaexport
• megaget
• megals
• megamkdir
• megaput
• megareg
• megarm
• megatest
• megatools

Project history

Ondrej Jirman released Megatools 1.0.0 in March 2013, shortly after Mega.nz became a popular encrypted cloud storage target. The project was written as a Free Software alternative to browser-centric workflows, and the official site emphasizes simple, reviewable code and user control over encryption keys.

The suite evolved from separate commands such as megadl, megaput, megals, megarm, and megareg toward a single megatools binary with subcommands and compatibility links. Its manual pages document both the unified command and individual command pages, while the megarc manual documents the INI configuration file used for login credentials and transfer settings.

Development moved off GitHub in April 2019, and the official Git repository and website now live under xff.cz. The project remains maintained, with 2020s releases adapting to Mega protocol changes, new link formats, login flow changes, shared-folder behavior, and anti-abuse responses from Mega.

Adoption history

Megatools achieved broad distro and package-manager adoption for a niche cloud client. The upstream site notes Debian unstable acceptance and Arch Linux repository availability, and the supplied package facts list Homebrew, Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, openSUSE, MacPorts, Nix, Chocolatey, Scoop, Alpine, and other packages.

That spread matters because Mega users often want the tool on headless servers, NAS boxes, CI jobs, and rescue shells where the official web client is not useful. Static Windows and Linux builds on the official site further widened use outside source builds.

How it is used

Megatools is used for command-line Mega storage operations: megatools ls, df, put, get, copy, mkdir, rm, export, dl, and reg. The man page also describes Mega's remote filesystem mapping, including /Root, /Trash, and /Shared paths.

Credentials are usually stored in ~/.megarc or ./.megarc under a [Login] section with Username and Password fields. The same file can hold cache, network, upload, and UI settings.

Why package nerds care

Megatools is the durable C/GLib-era Mega client that distribution maintainers kept carrying because it solved a real CLI gap. Package nerds care about it for its long-lived ABI/dependency concerns, its move from GitHub to self-hosted cgit, and its repeated adaptations to an unofficial but changing cloud-service API.

Timeline

• 2013-03-08: Megatools 1.0.0 released.
• 2013-04-12: Version 1.9.90 released under GPL with an experimental libmega library and language bindings.
• 2018-07-19: 1.10.0 release candidates added major transfer optimizations, upload parallelism, and interrupted download resumption.
• 2019-04-13: Project moved off GitHub.
• 2022-05-19: Megatools 1.11.0 released.
• 2025-01-27: Project domain moved from megatools.megous.com to xff.cz/megatools.
• 2026-05-27: Site notes modernization for Mega.nz protocol changes and full support for new-style shared folders.

Related projects

• Mega.nz: the cloud storage service Megatools targets.
• megacmd: a separate Go command-line client for Mega.
• rclone: a broader cloud-storage sync tool with Mega support.

Sources

• https://xff.cz/git/megatools
• https://xff.cz/megatools/
• https://xff.cz/megatools/man/megarc.html
• https://xff.cz/megatools/man/megatools.html
• source_facts.package-manager-url