Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

How to copy a file between devices? (2022)

grdw.nl

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 354 posts

Re: How to copy a file between devices? (2022)

#31

Post by advael »

dvngnt_ wrote: post #28
advael wrote: post #4

[flagged]

that could be complicated for people. some have never used a terminal before. people will literally write "command src dst" https://www.theverge.com/22684730/students-file-folder-direc...

Right. So my point is that if we define a non-technical user as "someone who doesn't know how to do the thing yet", and any amount of teaching them to do the thing is thus implicitly deemed an unacceptable cost, then the problem simply has no solution

Re: How to copy a file between devices? (2022)

#32

Post by 65 »

This shows the joys of writing software for yourself (and your friends if you want).

I have an admin panel on my website for dumping files into S3 that I can then download later.

There are a million solutions out there, but simply hosting a file upload/download service that syncs to your own S3 bucket is for me my favorite solution. It's user friendly to me only, it's unusable for everyone else.

Re: How to copy a file between devices? (2022)

#35

Post by TheAceOfHearts »

I've been thinking about this problem a lot recently... Honestly, I wish we could apply a bit of political pressure to force major tech companies to implement basic device interop and file transfers.

In the year 2024 you should be able to seamlessly transfer files across devices wirelessly regardless of operating system or manufacturer.

AirDrop is pretty close to ideal, but it's limited to Apple's platform. I don't really care about any of the underlying details, I just want to have a simple way of sending files between devices without having to enable complex configurations (cough SMB, WebDAV, etc.) or tinker with anything. This could be achieved, it's not a pipe dream.

Why isn't anyone lobbying for such an essential feature that could make everyone's life slightly better?

There are no technical barriers to implementing this. There's just no political will.

Edit: I think the ideal solution would be to have some sort of spec that device and operating system vendors could implement, so that workaround stop being required at some point. Then for older devices you could build an application that implements the same functionality.

Re: How to copy a file between devices? (2022)

#39

Post by nomel »

SOLAR_FIELDS wrote: post #5

Isn’t https://wormhole.app/ the solution here? Note I haven’t used it, it’s just often brought up here as a good solution for this class of problem. Is it surprising that the author mentions a ton of solutions but not this one? I would think a deep dive of file sending applications would include this, it’s old enough and well known enough in circles that its exclusion in a comparison of file sending approaches does f…

No way. The "solution" can't require internet access.

Re: How to copy a file between devices? (2022)

#40

Post by mkerrigan »

The bigger issue is on Apple and iOS, the "regular user" doesn't often interact with individual files outside of the app. Even at my work (US airline), there have been recent restrictions added to the workstations so you can't just plug in a USB thumb drive and transfer some files (honestly a no-brainer). But for many people, much of their experience learning about using computers comes from work. If you don't regularly do it at work, how would they learn how to do it outside of work?
Post reply on HN