FileZilla Archives ⋆ SkyBound Marketing

Sharing FTP login credentials with team members has always been an inconvenient and even painful process. Last year we adopted LastPass, which solved many of our password sharing challenges, but not FTP.

The following tutorial describes the process for sharing FTP login credentials for FileZilla (i.e. sitemanager.xml) with other machines or team members via Google Drive.

Requirements:

• This method applies to FileZilla, 3.8.1 or later.
• You must be using Google Drive for Desktop to sync.

Backup FileZilla’s Site Manager Entries

Before beginning, be sure to make up a backup of all your entries in Site Manager via the export feature.

Display Hidden Files in Finder

The files we need to manipulate are hidden by default, so we’ll need to show them. If you already display hidden files in Finder, skip ahead to the next step.

1. Open Terminal found in Finder > Applications > Utilities
2. In Terminal, paste the following:
   defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles YES
3. Press return
4. Hold the ‘Option/alt’ key, then right click on the Finder icon in the dock and click Relaunch.

Move FileZilla Application Settings to a Google Drive Shared Folder

Now that we can see hidden files, we are going to move the FileZilla settings files to a new location within Google Drive.

1. Navigate to your home folder (in Finder Shift+Command+H).
2. Under hidden folder “.config”, you should see the “filezilla” subfolder.
3. Move that subfolder to any location in the Google Drive folder in Finder.

Update the FileZilla Settings Pathname Location

1. Create a file named “fzdefaults.xml” in the text editor of your choosing.
2. Inside that file paste the following code (if you want more info, see the full instructions under FileZilla/Contents/docs/fzdefaults.xml.example)
3. Update the “Config Location” with the directory pathname that matches your new Google Drive location. (Tip, to find a folder or file pathname, navigate to it in Finder, right-click, then press the option key.)
4. Navigate to the FileZilla application link, then right-click and select “Show Package Contents” and save fzdefaults.xml under the Contents/SharedSupport subdirectory.

That’s all Folks! 

Cleaning up / Next Steps

1. Make sure the Site Manager is working properly and that the files are syncing.
2. To access this information on other machines, obviously you only need to add fzdefaults.xml and update the relevant pathname information to the settings folder already in Google Drive.
3. To re-hide files, in Terminal, paste the following:
   defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles NO
4. Note that older versions of Filezilla stored settings in .filezilla instead of in .config. If your settings are in .filezilla this process won’t work for you. However, you can uninstall FileZilla and delete .filezilla. Then re-install the latest version and import all your entries from your backup file. Then follow the steps above.