What Is Bring-Your-Own Storage?

Bring-your-own storage, often shortened to BYOS, is a simple idea: the application gives you the workflow, but your files stay in storage you own or directly control.

How BYOS differs from a traditional cloud drive

A traditional cloud drive usually hosts your files and sells storage as part of the product. A BYOS app is different. It connects to your bucket or provider account and acts as the interface for file work.

• The storage account belongs to you.
• Files stay with your provider.
• The app can focus on workflow, privacy, and user experience.
• Storage billing remains between you and your provider.

What GhostDesk stores

GhostDesk stores the minimum service data required to make the product usable across devices: account state, encrypted storage configuration, and share-link metadata. It does not store your file contents.

Why it matters

BYOS is useful when you want convenience without moving files into another hosted drive. It is especially useful for people already using Cloudflare R2 or another S3-compatible provider.