WebDAV isn't dead yet
60 comments
·October 24, 2025ctippett
> In fact, you're already using WebDAV and you just don't realize it.
Tailscale's drive share feature is implemented as a WebDAV share (connect to http://100.100.100.100:8080). You can also connect to Fastmail's file storage over WebDAV.
WebDAV is neat.
rpdillon
I use it all the time to mount my CopyParty instance. Works great!
1123581321
I built a simple WebDAV server with Sabre to sync Devonthink databases. WebDAV was the only option that synced between users of multiple iCloud accounts, worked anywhere in the world and didn’t require a Dropbox subscription. It’s a faster sync than CloudKit. I don’t have other WebDAV use cases but I expect this one to run without much maintenance or cost for years. Useful protocol.
walterbell
iOS DevonThink sync WebDAV has been reliable, fast, maintained, non-subscription and includes a web scraper. Good for saving LLM chatbot markdown.
cricalix
"FTP is dead" - shared web hosting would like a word. Quite a few web hosts still talk about using FTP to upload websites to the hosting server. Yes, these days you can upload SSH keys and possibly use SFTP, but the docs still talk about tools like FileZilla and basic FTP.
Exhibit A: https://help.ovhcloud.com/csm/en-ie-web-hosting-ftp-storage-...
SoftTalker
I haven't used old school FTP in probably 15 years. Surely we're not talking about using that unencrypted protocol in 2025?
From that link:
2. SSH connection
You will need advanced knowledge and an OVHcloud web hosting plan Pro or Performance to use this access type.
sltkr
They mention that the "FTP" service includes SFTP, which is file transfer over SSH (not actually related to classic FTP), which is perfectly secure and supported by most FTP clients like Filezilla.
The premium "SSH connection" you mentioned seems to refer to shell access via SSH, which is a separate thing.
carlosjobim
FTP still works great and encryption is a non-priority for 100% of users.
creatonez
Transport encryption should be a huge priority for everyone. It's completely unacceptable to continue using unencrypted protocols over the public internet.
Especially for the use case of transferring files to and from the backend of a web host. Not using it in that scenario is freely handing over control over your backend to everything in between you and the host, putting everyone at risk in the process.
SXX
It should be priority for hosting companies though since leaked credentials and websites hosting malware is a problem.
jasongill
Shared hosting is dying, but not yet dead; FTP is dying with it - it's really the last big use case for FTP now that software distribution and academia have moved away from FTP. As shared hosting continues to decline in popularity, FTP is going along with it.
Like you, I will miss the glory days of FTP :'(
bawolff
I think the true death of ftp was amazon s3 deciding to use their own protocol instead of ftp, as s3 is basically the same niche.
theshackleford
Shared hosting is in decline in much the same way as it was in 2015. Aka everyone involved is still making money hand over fist despite continued reports of its death right around the corner.
tredre3
The number of shared hosting providers has drastically declined since the 2000s. I would posit that things like squarespace/hosted wordpress took the lion share, with the advent of $5-10 VPS filling the remaining niches.
The remaining hosting companies certainly still make a lot of money, a shared hosting business is basically on autopilot once set up (I used to own one, hence why I still track the market) and they can be overcommitted like crazy.
jasongill
No, not at all the case. There has been continued consolidation of the shared hosting space, plus consumer interest in "a website" has declined sharply now that small businesses just feel that they need an instagram to get started. Combine that with site builders eating at shared hosting's market share, and it's not looking good for the future of the "old school" shared hosting industry that you are thinking of.
null
cyberpunk
I use webdav for serving media over tailscale to infuse when I'm on the move. SMB did not play nicely at all and nfs is not supported..
The go stdlib has quite a good one that just works with only a small bit of wrapping in a main() etc.
Although ive since written one in elixir that seems to handle my traffic better..
(you can also mount them on macos and browse with finder / shell etc which is pretty nice)
mid1221213
On the same topic, and because I believe too that WebDAV is not dead, far from it, I published a WIP lastly, part of a broader project, that is an nginx module that does WebDAV file server and is compatible with NextCloud sync clients, desktop & Android. It can be used with Gnome Online Accounts too, as well as with Nautilus (and probably others), as a WebDAV server.
Have a look there: https://codeberg.org/lunae/dav-next
/!\ it's a WIP, thus not packaged anywhere yet, no binary release, etc… but all feedback welcome
sylens
Author seems to conflate S3 API with S3 itself. Most vendors are now including S3 API compatibility into their product because people are so used to using that as a model
notpushkin
They do mention S3-compatible servers later in the post. It really seems to be about protocol itself.
PunchyHamster
More like attempt at S3 API compatibility...
dangus
I was about to make a very similar comment.
There really is nothing wrong with the S3 API and the complaints about Minio and S3 are basically irrelevant. It’s an API that dozens of solutions implement.
williamjackson
I was surprised, then not really surprised, when I found out this week that Tailscale's native file sharing feature, Taildrive, is implemented as a WebDAV server in the network.
nine_k
What else would you expect, just out of curiosity? SMB? NFS? SSHFS?
worik
A proprietary binary patented protocol...
PunchyHamster
and do what, implement virtual filesystem driver for every OS ?
netsharc
One interesting use of WebDAV is SysInternals (which is a collection of tools for Windows), it's accessible from Windows Explorer via WebDAV by going to \\live.sysinternals.com\Tools
gruez
Isn't that SMB, not webdav?
netsharc
I guess the "\\$HOSTNAME\$DIR" URL syntax in Windows Explorer also works for WebDAV. Is it safe to have SMB over WAN?
I just tried https://live.sysinternals.com/Tools in Windows Explorer, and it also lists the files, identical to how it would show the contents of any directory.
Even running "dir \\live.sysinternals.com\Tools", or starting a program from the command prompt like "\\live.sysinternals.com\Tools\tcpview64" works.
MrDrMcCoy
IIRC, Windows for a while had native WebDAV support in Explorer, but setting it up was very non-obvious. Not sure if it still does, since I've moved fully to Linux.
Tractor8626
If you need sftp independent of unix auth - there is sftpgo.
Sftpgo also supports webdav, but for use cases in the article sftp is just better.
ycui1986
The Windows built-in WebDAV in explorer embarrassingly slow. Pretty much unusable for anything serious.
EvanAnderson
For sure. I tried to setup a collaboration environment for a Customer years ago using WebDAV over SSL in lieu of Dropbox. Everything worked great (authenticating to Active Directory, NTFS ACLs, IP address restrictions in IIS policy where necessary, auditing access in Windows security log and IIS logs, no client to install), but the Windows client experience was hideously slow. People hated it for that and it got no traction.
nine_k
OTOH gio-based WebDAV access built into Nautilus and Thunar is something I use daily, and it works quite fine, for a FUSE-based filesystem.
Unlike NFS or SMB, WebDAV mounts do not get stuck for a minute when the connection becomes unstable.
throwaway87502
> While writing this article I came across an interesting project under development, Altmount. This would allow you to "mount" published content on Usenet and access it directly without downloading it... super interesting considering I can get multi-gigabit access to Usenet pretty easily.
There is also NzbDav for this too, https://github.com/nzbdav-dev/nzbdav
I wrote both the WebDAV client (backend) for rclone and the WebDAV server. This means you can sync to and from WebDAV servers or mount them just fine. You can also expose your filesystem as a WebDAV server (or your S3 bucket or Google Drive etc).
The RFCs for WebDAV are better than those for FTP but there is still an awful lot of not fully specified stuff which servers and clients choose to do differently which leads to lots of workarounds.
The protocol doesn't let you set modification times by default which is important for a sync tool, but popular implementations like owncloud and nextcloud do. Likewise with hashes.
However the protocol is very fast, much faster than SFTP with it's homebrew packetisation as it's based on well optimised web tech, HTTP, TLS etc.