Don’t cripple the community for the sake of a commercial agenda!
Umbrel was built by the community, is maintained by the community, and thrives because of the community. Developers, contributors, and users actively port, test, and improve apps, debug issues, enhance security, and optimize performance—all without paywalls or restrictions.
One of the most discussed and requested features in the community has been seamless external storage support for non-technical users. And yet, you decided to disable it?! Are you serious?
If you truly intend to block external storage for non-Umbrel hardware, at least do it properly instead of making a lazy change like this
async isExternalDriveConnectedOnNonUmbrelHome() {
const isHome = await isUmbrelHome(); // Just hardcode this to `true`
const { disks } = await getDisksAndPartitions();
// Exclude any external disks that include the current data directory.
// This prevents USB storage-based Raspberry Pi setups from detecting
// their primary storage as an external drive.
const df = await $`df ${this.#umbreld.dataDirectory} --output=source`;
const dataDirDisk = df.stdout.split('\n').pop()?.split('/').pop()?.replace(/\d+$/, '');
const externalDisks = disks.filter((disk) => disk.id !== dataDirDisk);
return !isHome && externalDisks.length > 0;
}
This move alienates the very people who helped make Umbrel what it is today. If there’s a valid technical reason behind this change, communicate it transparently. Otherwise, it just looks like an anti-community decision disguised as an “update.”
Think about the long-term impact before taking away a feature that many in the community rely on.
I can understand some of the frustration here, but if you look at it from a pragmatic perspective, Umbrel’s decision makes sense. External storage devices have often caused issues in the past - whether due to incompatible USB adapters, weak power supplies, or other hardware-related problems. If Umbrel aims to provide a stable system, it’s not unreasonable for them to eliminate such a common source of issues.
Of course, one could speculate that this decision also has financial motives. And yes, Umbrel is a startup, they need to make money to sustain themselves in the long run. It’s not wrong if they try to promote their own hardware ecosystem because, in the end, they have employees to pay.
That being said, more transparency would be welcome. If Umbrel communicated more clearly about the reasons behind this decision, it could prevent misunderstandings and frustration within the community. Maybe there’s a way to allow external storage as an optional feature along with a clear warning that it may lead to stability issues.
I guess the Umbrel devs don’t care much about this community forum anyway, let’s hope they see your github topic
There’re some still waiting for https (?)
It’s like an Apple’s vision, one OS for one device, theirs.
I am aware that Umbrel is a startup and that there is indeed a need for economic returns—after all, jobs need to be sustained. However, this can be achieved through the development of a fully functional and high-performance application while upholding what they have always stood for: data protection and privacy!
Umbrel has an incredible opportunity to take both the technical and non-technical communities to the next level—toward a decentralized, secure, and censorship-free internet. Disabling features that had already been implemented and restricting them to a select group with deep pockets is almost a sign of disrespect to the community.
It cost a lot of money in Brazil. A lot!
Who remembers what UmbrelOS was a year ago? Just a simple Docker container, built on the shoulders of platforms like Caprover and CasaOS, and strongly driven by an active community.
You know a feature that Umbrel could implement to generate revenue? A reverse proxy, allowing users to expose their services to the internet when port forwarding is blocked by their ISP. Not an internal storage system. This is public knowledge, something that had already been shared in the Umbrel community forum.
You know another feature I wouldn’t even bother with? Internal storage expansion by combining two disks. It’s public knowledge, but technically a bit more complex—yet still incredibly useful! Just like formatting, disk repair… and countless other possibilities. But preventing someone from plugging in a storage device just to copy files? Now, that’s too low. Even EA Sports would be surprised!
I have some implementation for HTTPS here, but it’s not ready yet. To be honest, it’s not working properly. It’s a side project I started based on Deployarr, but I haven’t finished it yet. I’ve been a bit overwhelmed with work lately. However, as soon as I finish it, I’ll definitely share it with you.
Umbrel lost its purpose with the community since 1 year ago, i joined it because it was an awesome community supported thing, Since they made their own OS… i make your words mine. Possibly moving back to CasaOS soon, because at least it works with my machine.
Based on Umbrel’s GitHub source, they are somewhat testing HTTPs functionality, just haven’t implemented it as a feature, likely cause they’re still working on it, I’m hoping a workaround won’t be needed indefinitely.
There’s a PR for an app on the store that requires it, which as been labelled as “pending feature” which gives me hope for HTTPs
While exploring discussions about external storage on UmbrelOS, I created something that might be useful. If you’re curious, feel free to check it out!
