Announcing Dropgate for TrueNAS Systems

Published 21 April 2026

Today marks a huge milestone for Diamond Digital Development: Dropgate Server is now available on the TrueNAS App Market. With a couple of clicks from the TrueNAS web UI, anyone running a TrueNAS system can deploy their own private, end-to-end encrypted file sharing server — no Docker commands, no reverse proxy gymnastics, and no subscriptions.

What is TrueNAS, for those new to it?

If you’ve never come across TrueNAS before, here’s the short version. TrueNAS is an open-source operating system built specifically for network-attached storage (NAS) and home/enterprise server use. It’s developed by a company called iXsystems, and it’s built around the rock-solid OpenZFS file system along with a Docker-based app store, containers, and a virtual machine hypervisor for hosting extra services on top.

In plain English: it turns a pile of hard drives and a computer into a powerful, reliable, self-hosted server with a friendly web interface. You can use it to store files, back up your devices, stream media, host game servers, run web apps, and — as of today — easily share files privately with Dropgate.

It’s also completely free for personal and community use. We’ve written about TrueNAS before as our recommended OS for home server beginners, and this release is a natural extension of that recommendation.

Why this is such a huge milestone

TrueNAS isn’t some niche platform. It’s genuinely one of the most widely deployed pieces of open-source storage software on the planet.

Here are the numbers, straight from iXsystems:

  • TrueNAS has eclipsed the 15 million download mark, deployed in 200 countries and territories worldwide.
  • With over one million deployments worldwide, there are hundreds of thousands of active TrueNAS users, with 93% of free TrueNAS users (both CORE and SCALE) actively recommending the software.
  • iXsystems describes the millions of TrueNAS users as having made it the world’s most deployed storage software.
  • TrueNAS is deployed in over 60% of the Fortune 500, as well as throughout schools and universities, corporations of all sizes, governments, security services, churches and religious organizations, museums, major sports leagues, casinos, data centres, cloud services, online gaming, and NGOs.

So when we say that Dropgate is now accessible to millions of people through a one-click install, we genuinely mean it. That’s an audience size that — frankly — a small open-source collective like ours doesn’t usually get to reach.

What this means for Diamond Digital Development

This is a big moment for us as a collective. Ever since we pivoted to being a fully open-source collective earlier this year, our goal has been to build useful, privacy-respecting tools and get them in front of as many people as possible. Landing Dropgate in the TrueNAS App Market directly supports that mission in a few concrete ways:

  • Widespread adoption. Every TrueNAS installation in the world is now one app install away from running a Dropgate server. That’s an enormous jump in potential reach for what was, until recently, a project that required people to find our GitHub repo and manually spin it up with Docker.
  • More eyes on the collective. More users means more bug reports, more feature requests, more contributors, and — hopefully — more people stumbling across our other projects too. Tools like Craftbox, our web panel for managing Minecraft servers, benefit from every new person who joins our community. We plan to make Craftbox available for TrueNAS once a stable build is finalised.
  • Validation of the open-source pivot. Getting listed on a platform as respected as TrueNAS is a strong signal that the community-first, open-source-first approach we’ve committed to is the right direction. Closed-source, subscription-based software simply doesn’t end up in app catalogues like this one.
  • A real path to sustainability. More users mean more potential support via Buy Me a Coffee, which is what keeps the lights on around here. Donations aren’t a requirement, but they genuinely do help us keep building.

Why Dropgate fits TrueNAS so well

If you’ve read our explainer on how Dropgate works, you’ll know it was designed from day one to be self-hosted, privacy-first, and easy to run. That design philosophy maps almost perfectly onto what TrueNAS users are already looking for:

  • It’s built for self-hosting. Dropgate was never designed as a SaaS product. It was always meant to live on hardware you control, and TrueNAS is exactly that kind of hardware.
  • It respects privacy by default. With optional end-to-end encryption using AES-256-GCM, even the server operator can’t read uploaded files. Encryption keys stay client-side. That’s the kind of privacy story TrueNAS users care deeply about.
  • It plays nicely with reverse proxies. TrueNAS users typically expose services via Cloudflare Tunnel, Tailscale, or a reverse proxy like NGINX or Caddy — all of which Dropgate supports out of the box.
  • It offers two sharing modes. The classic hosted upload flow is great for asynchronous sharing, whilst direct peer-to-peer transfer lets users skip server storage entirely when both parties are online at the same time.

Getting started

If you’re already running TrueNAS, installing Dropgate is straightforward:

  1. Open your TrueNAS web UI and head to the Apps section.
  2. Search for Dropgate Server.
  3. Click Install, review the configuration options (file size limits, encryption settings, P2P toggle, and so on), and deploy.
  4. Optionally, pair it with a Cloudflare Tunnel or Tailscale to make it securely accessible from anywhere.

From there, you can either use the built-in Web UI directly in your browser, or download the Dropgate Client app for the desktop experience, including right-click “Share with Dropgate” context menu integration on Windows.

If you’re not already on TrueNAS but you’ve been curious about running a home server, our beginner’s guide to home servers walks through everything from hardware picks to networking setup. TrueNAS SCALE remains our top recommendation for anyone building a custom home server, and now there’s one more reason to give it a go.

Thank you

To everyone who’s used Dropgate, starred the repo, opened an issue, contributed a fix, joined our Discord, or bought us a coffee — thank you. This milestone wouldn’t have happened without the community that’s built up around the project. We’re genuinely excited about what 2026 has in store, and this feels like a proper step forward for Diamond Digital Development as an open-source collective.

If Dropgate has been useful to you, or you just want to help keep the project moving, you can support us via Buy Me a Coffee. Every little contribution genuinely makes a difference.

Here’s to more people getting true control over their file sharing. Talk soon.

- WillTDA, Founder of Diamond Digital Development