Release history
The current release is 3.4.4, and it is the one to install. Below: what it changed and how to check your download, then a line each on the releases just before it.
rsync 3.4.4 — 8 June 2026
A regression-fix release. 3.4.3, three weeks earlier, was a major security release, and it broke enough things in the process that this release exists to put them right. If you are choosing a version, this is it.
The project's own changelog calls it "a conservative point release that backports regression fixes on top of 3.4.3," with no new features — a dozen or so fixes, mostly to how the daemon resolves paths on an alternate-basis transfer and a couple of crash fixes on the receiving side. The detailed changelog lists every change, with credits to the people who reported the problems.
Checking your download
Every release tarball is published with a detached GPG signature. Verifying takes one command:
# the release and its detached signature
curl -O https://download.samba.org/pub/rsync/src/rsync-3.4.4.tar.gz
curl -O https://download.samba.org/pub/rsync/src/rsync-3.4.4.tar.gz.asc
# check it really came from the maintainer
gpg --verify rsync-3.4.4.tar.gz.asc rsync-3.4.4.tar.gz
Releases from 3.4.0 onwards are signed by Andrew Tridgell; earlier ones by Wayne Davison. If gpg
does not have the key, fetch the one for andrew@tridgell.net from
keys.openpgp.org first — a signature you never check is
not protecting you from anything. Full instructions are on
the install page.
The three before it
- rsync 3.4.3 20 May 2026 Security
A major security release. Anything older than this should be upgraded — but upgrade to 3.4.4, which fixes the regressions this one introduced.
- rsync 3.4.2 28 April 2026
A maintenance release.
- rsync 3.4.1 15 January 2025
Fixes regressions in 3.4.0, which was released the day before.
Everything older
rsync has been released steadily for over twenty years, and writing that history out here would only produce a second copy of it to go stale. Two places have it properly:
- The project's NEWS file is the authoritative changelog — every release ever made, including ones still in development.
- Tags on GitHub give you the source for any specific version, and the download directory holds every historical release tarball and diff.
Signed patch sets are also still published for older stable series — 3.2.7 and 3.4.1 — for distributors not yet able to move to 3.4.4. Each comes as a full set that applies to a pristine release tarball, and an update set with only the patches added since the previous security release.
If you would rather read the announcements as they were written at the time, the project's own homepage carries all of them, back to 2004.
Being told about the next one
rsync-announce is a mailing list carrying release announcements and nothing else — a few messages a month at most. It is a better way to track releases than remembering to check a web page.