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How to copy a file between devices? (2022)

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

#81

Post by greatgib »

The best solution I have found to easily exchange files between devices so far is to use Telegram. It works perfectly for your own devices.

You can have it on multiple devices at the same time (computers, phones,...), there is a special "saved messages" channel for files, it can easily accommodate small to reasonably big files (like GB files), and there is also a webclient that you can use in a few seconds if you are not on your trusted computer.

You can also delete the file once you are done. The only problem is that you will have to trust Telegram for having you data. But I guess that if you are ready to trust WeTransfer or Google drive, it is not really different.

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

#82

Post by monkellipse »

pharrington wrote: post #58
advael wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Nah, you just make your interface use verbs the target audience is already familiar with. They might not by familiar with command line text verbs, but they're probably familiar with point & click or drag & drop verbs.

Having just last night gone back and forth with multiple screenshots and careful explanations to guide someone through importing a picture from email to the ios photos app… maybe I’m lazy but it’s just exhausting. I agree that with effort it’s do-able, but it IS tiring :)

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

#83

Post by ogurechny »

karaterobot wrote: post #23
vinnymac wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here is a list of open source options. This isn't the first time I have shared this on here either. Perhaps this is another sign that web search is failing us. SnapDrop - Site: https://snapdrop.net/ - Source: https://github.com/RobinLinus/snapdrop ShareDrop - Site: https://www.sharedrop.io/ - Source: https://github.com/szimek/sharedrop FilePizza - Site: https://file.pizza/ - Source: https://github.com/kern/filepizza…

I've tried using Wormhole and Filepizza from two devices on my network (a MacOS laptop and a Windows PC) and they just don't work for me. I assume the others use the same approach, and would probably also not work. I'm sure there's some setting I could change on my home network to make them work, but I think the point of the article is that we're looking for a way that a) just works, b) across platforms, c) even if y…

a) Connection from one port of your external IP address to another port on your external IP address will not work if you are behind NAT that is not set up properly to enable hairpin connections.

b) Local IP addresses to connect to may not be provided by the browser to the Javascript code if there's a setting or extension that disables it.

c) Local router can be set up to prohibit traffic between clients (usually wireless devices). If hairpins don't work, you can't exchange any data between such devices without the help of external relay server, as there is no local network at all.

Other than that, WebRTC promises that two browsers can transfer data directly if they are able send UDP packets to each other somehow.

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

#84

Post by maybevain »

namphibian wrote: post #73
m-a-r-c-e-l wrote: post #63

Use WhatsApp: - create a group and add 1 person - remove that person - share whatever you like with yourself via WhatsApp web :)

Not necessary anymore, you can message yourself in WhatsApp now. They even sent me a notification in that regard. (That is recent though and I wish I'd known that (clever) workaround before this was possible)

Recent? Unless you mean the notification, sending yourself a message has been possible for a long time. Just to make sure I know what I'm talking about I checked the conversation history with myself and the earliest messages are from 2016.

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

#86

Post by esafak »

XorNot wrote: post #78
DaSHacka wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If only we had something like AirDrop that reliably worked cross-platform. Proximity-based sharing just makes significantly more sense than uploading files to some server miles away, then immediately redownloading them back when the computer was two feet away from you the whole time.

Pairdrop was posted on HN a little while back and I setup an instance on my home network. Doesn't work everywhere obviously but it does seem to effectively solve this problem within my household. https://github.com/schlagmichdoch/PairDrop

It dropped files midstream for me. Name checks out, I guess.

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

#88

Post by AceJohnny2 »

vinhcognito wrote: post #3

It's insane to me that this is a frustration I've had back maybe 20 years now and I still feel like there isn't a particularly great solution. My current iteration is just a "transfer" SyncThing folder that is on all my devices. It's not clean or convenient but at least its incredibly fast.

The hilarious thing is that was what Dropbox was meant to solve.

Like Drew Houston's demos to Y Combinator was copying a file to a given folder on one computer... and seeing it show up in the corresponding folder on another computer. HN comments at the time were dismissing, like "whatever, I can do that with rsync"

And then cloud storage became a thing.

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

#89

Post by guitarlimeo »

greatgib wrote: post #81

The best solution I have found to easily exchange files between devices so far is to use Telegram. It works perfectly for your own devices. You can have it on multiple devices at the same time (computers, phones,...), there is a special "saved messages" channel for files, it can easily accommodate small to reasonably big files (like GB files), and there is also a webclient that you can use in a few seconds if you are…

Yeah same here. Feels stupid sometimes though to transfer a 2GB file from my pc to my laptop through Telegram's servers when I could do it in my LAN but nothing has beaten Telegram's UX for me so far so I always wound up using it.
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