Frustration with Cumbersome File Sharing
Users are experiencing significant frustration with existing file sharing methods, which are often slow, inconvenient, involve repeated uploads, raise privacy concerns, or lack self-hosting options. They seek simpler, faster, and more secure ways to share files directly, often bypassing traditional cloud storage. This pain point has led some to build their own solutions or actively search for alternatives.
SOURCES (60)
“oh this is clever, I share screenshots and random text snippets between my mac and pc all day for design work so I feel the pain of the usb shuffle in my bones will test it out tomorrow, the no-account thing is what sold me”
“Hello to everyone. I hope this is the right sub to ask this. For at least 5 years I've been using both Google Photos and OneDrive to back up my photos. While OneDrive isn't perfect, it lays out all my photos in an understandable matter on my PC. All the exif data is contained in the photos and videos itself. When I use Google Takeout to download my entire G Photos library I've noticed that the exif data is separate and all my photos are in confusing folders and such. So i Have 2 prob”
“Please confirm: [x] I have searched existing feature requests (open and closed) and found no duplicates. [x] Me or my organization currently has an active subscription to the product at the €99/month level. Problem Statement Hi, As an MSP I am really impressed with CIPP and finding it is doing 90% of our day to day tasks across all of our M365 tenants. However, something that we do when offboarding a user is copy their Onedrive data to a central Sharepoint site, ie. "Data Archive" with a Documen”
“10 minutes and a QR is the right shape for "I just need this photo on my phone." what would make me bounce is not knowing if the phone actually got it. a tiny "opened" mark on the laptop side, without keeping the file longer, would tell me I can close the tab. 20MB is fine for a photo or a pdf, not for the video I usually end up emailing myself.”
“Are you wanting to share the year folders or the subfolders? Any folder you share will allow them to access all subfolders”
“https://github.com/IsaacInsoll/PICR Allows you to generate a secret link for each user, optionally notifies you when they access it too 😀”
“If a client shares a same named file with the server, the current behavior on the server is rename the same named file. I think clipshare's main purpose is temporary clipboard or file/directory sharing, at least for me, so it probably won't store or retain previously sent files. Therefore, I'd like the server to have an option: autoclean at a frequency for files or directories received on the server.”
“Pure .md files with open source readers is about as resilient to platform risk you can possibly get. What alternative do you have in mind? We also depend on the operating system and having semiconductors available and having a power grid. It's a risk-reward-effort tradeoff but I really don't get how it could be worth it to save the binaries, not even to preserve the data but to preserve the styling of the viewer”
“Yes, it works. I tested it in a Windows 11 VM with WinUSB. The app blocks Windows with an OS check, because without WinUSB Chrome cannot claim the phone, and installing WinUSB is too much setup for most users.”
“Google discontinued Android File Transfer. OpenMTP and MacDroid still work, but they are apps you install, and I wanted to know if a browser could do it on its own. Turns out Chrome can. The app speaks MTP to the phone over WebUSB and uses the File System Access API for a folder on your Mac. It is plain JS with no dependencies or build step, your files are never uploaded, and it works offline once loaded. I built it with Claude Code. Weirdest thing I ran into: macOS apps like Photos and Image Ca”
“yeah, paid digital stuff is probably where i'd use this. once someone has the file there's not much you can do anymore. being able to expire access later would be pretty useful”
“Yeah, text or other data can still be lost or leaked. The bottom line is you can’t promise 100% protection. But I’ve done some research in this area, and the approach really depends on the file and what you’re optimizing for.”
“Yeah, absolutely. Once someone can see the content, you can’t prevent copying completely. The goal is to make extraction harder, keep control over normal access, and potentially trace the source of a leak.”
“that's a totally fine approach honestly the header check first is a good quick filter and magic is rock solid for catching the actual content type only thing i'd add is maybe cap the file size before you even peek at the bytes, no point running magic on something that's clearly too big for a product photo anyway”
“Would love to see the ratio percentage between my downloaded size and uploaded size for a torrent Bonus: See the max ratio configured”
“Project Name: Twig Repo/Website Link: https://github.com/dev2ex/twig Description: An Android file manager built for people who self-host. Your restic repos, Jellyfin/Emby libraries, SMB and WebDAV shares, SFTP servers and S3 buckets all end up in one tree, and copying between any two of them is the same operation — a folder on your NAS straight into S3, or a file inside a remote archive out to an SFTP box. The parts I haven't found elsewhere on Android: restic repos, read-only, decrypted on”
“Some people get free leech torrents that are popular so they can get upload credit when they’re starting out on a new tracker”
“The access management is in the database not in file level. Its working fine currently in my vibe coded demo enviroment.”
“So if I have 300 folders and send all the links to the friends each time? And if they want to browse the different events, they needs to pick the right url for the right folder??? thats not gonna work..”
“Am I thinking too simple or is your use case much easier than you think? Create an album per event. Create a share link per event. She the links with the users you want to have access.”
“whatever you pick, make sure sharing is tied to albums/tags not folder paths, since your groups overlap and folder-based perms get messy fast when someone belongs to two groups.”
“I already started coding something, but first I would like to use some proper solution. Still ill think its not solvable with Immich what I described. But will test it just for fun.”
“Sonora is a native Android client for Soulseek, a P2P music-sharing network that's been around since 2000. Most clients need a desktop or a self-hosted server. Sonora runs the whole protocol on the phone itself, written in Kotlin. submitted by /u/ART3MISTICAL [link] [comments]”
“Project Name: LiteSync Repo: https://github.com/avayadhakal/LiteSync Description: LiteSync is a lightweight web-based file manager and transfer tool for Linux. It provides a browser-based dual-pane interface for browsing directories, uploading/downloading files, and copying or moving files between disks/filesystems. For transfers, it uses Linux's copy_file_range() for straightforward local copies and rsync when resumability or exclusions are needed. It also supports background transfers, pau”
“photoprism or immich, let them read the folders, for photoprism you can activate read-only mode, and then you can browse by folder and make it an album. although I heard somewhere that immich has a feature where it autogenerates Albums from folders”
“I don't know anything about coding, online terms, brand new to put it simply. I want to be able to share files(images, videos) with my family, but I don't want to share on a cloud service or whatever, I like to keep it private. Am I at the right place? I read a lot of posts here and I can't understand most of the terms and names, are there any guides(for complete dummies) that explain things to a 5 year old? because even googling most of the terms seems like a rabbit hole and I can&#”
“I got tired of the friction in everyday file sharing. Every time I needed to send a simple file, every major service wanted an email address, an account creation, or a subscription prompt. I have no idea what half these file-sharing sites are actually doing with user data behind the scenes. At work, we're pushed to use OneDrive, but it’s a pain for quick transfers—you constantly have to remember to manually revoke access or delete old files/folders later, or else your storage becomes a messy”
“Size is a big reason, but it isn’t the only trigger. A presigned upload lets the browser send bytes straight to object storage, keeping large files and bandwidth off your API while preserving a clean auth boundary: your API authorizes the upload and returns a short-lived, scoped URL, then storage receives it. I’d use it for large or numerous files, flaky clients, or independent upload/retry/processing; for small files, proxying through your API is simpler and keeps validation and chat-message cr”
“Resilio Sync. Been using it for >6-7 yrs now, back then it was still called BitTorrent sync. Surprised I don't see this more often. Superior to Syncthing, free and never had a single sync issue or conflict ever. Snca within seconds or less.”
“So I know I'm going to eat karma burn for this, but Synology Drive is one of those apps that the FOSS community still hasn't quite caught up with yet. I used Seafile for the better part of a year and while it did work, I found Synology Drive to be more reliable and quicker to detect changes on the local filesystems. And yes, it does have a Linux client according to the documentation. Note that you do not have to have Synology hardware to run their software stack. It might be outside the”
“Honestly, comparing my 20 MB chunks to a HuggingFace data lake is a bit overkill. I’m just after a cheap off‑site copy, and Telegram’s limits actually forced me to design a more resilient client.”
“fair concern honestly. the huggingface thing is exactly what i'm trying not to be. this is personal photos, a few hundred GB at most, and the client respects the rate limits instead of hammering them. it's the off-site copy, not the main backup, so if telegram decides they don't want it i lose nothing”
“And this is how a few people ALWAYS spoil a good thing for the rest of us. We simply cannot have nice things. Same thing happened with people storing tens of terabytes on huggingface.”
“You're going to want to want a VPN into your network, then use some kind of program to access your files. I'll tell you now that this is inconvenient, but that's usually the trade off for things like this.”
“I might just be really behind the times here but AFAIK all other Dropbox or Seafile do is sync client directories to a server. I have no idea what "File on Access Function" means in this context. I’m equally unclear on what "Network File Realization" is supposed to mean. What are you actually wanting it to do besides sync your files?”
“I never said it didnt have linux clients. The problem is that the linux clients have very limited functionality compared to windows. No context menu. No creating share links. No selecting files to pin locally. Etc”
“I HATE how immich handles backups from a smartphone. Splitting live photos into two files, instead of just uploading as is. My current setup is: Photo storage on NAS expose via NFS share > Nextcloud files with NFS share mounted as external folder > Photos and videos from my smartphone are sync'd via Nextcloud's WebDAV service using Photosync app to the external folder. Immich is hooked up to the photo storage on my NAS through the NFS share.”
“I suggest to move default sharex data path to appdata/roaming/ instead of documents/. Everyone is tired of documents folder being used for random stuff”
“Thank you for testing it. Appreciate it. But it need to work from outside lan.. so will look into something http based.”
“oh interesting, Thank you. I will look into storage templates. But I do not want to duplicate files, which I am not sure will be possible with this setup. But I'll play with it and see.”
“Two paragraphs and a blank line, I know. It reads like a form. The chunking point stands though. Fixed equal splits are what strand you at 99 percent waiting on the slow link.”
“Ha. The slow link is the one I feel sorry for, still grinding through its chunk after everything else has finished.”
“https://preview.redd.it/99n5usxwicqh1.png?width=453&format=png&auto=webp&s=cfa5d6081f136327098ca45f0dae814acb96dfb9 Even the link in the pop-up window doesn't explain why this is happening. submitted by /u/deramack [link] [comments]”
“I just hate their privacy rules. It’s like an open book for anything/everything in Dropbox. Sure you can use Cryptomator. But that then screws with any sync’ing”
“OneDrive is great if you are using windows on every computer. Dropbox is better if you have multiple OS involved. Syncthing is better once you throw in a smartphone or similar.”
“I think I remember a post on Reddit about an open source, multi OS, tool that could share a folder and used encryption - but simply can’t find it. Any help appreciated. If I remember correctly it was really simple, supporting Linux, Mac and Windows. I think the entire commandline was something like this: PS> .\share -source c:\path\source\ And > ./share -host n.n.n.n -mount /path/destination/ After this, all files in the source folder would look like they existed natively in the destinatio”
“Hi all! I use sync.com for syncing my main files between my mac, android phone and ipad. Got my homelab running many services but got some resources left, and I already got wireguard set up from all devices to it... figured I could stop paying over 100eur per year for this service and just host it. I just need: - A good cloud sync app for each (MacOS, Android, IpadOS) - To be able to choose what constantly stays on the device - Versioning, if possible. - No other features, no collaborative apps”
“Problem The app exists to "share text and files," but file transfer has no implementation — only docstring references to "attachments" ( backend/app/handlers/file handling.py:5,36 ). No upload endpoint, no multipart handling, no UI file input, no download. Fix Design and implement file transfer over the existing session/WS model (chunked upload or a dedicated HTTP upload endpoint keyed by session, streamed/relayed to peers), with size limits. Note: interacts with the in memory/no persistence dec”
“Not open source and the license fee is a turn off for something that only provides file access.”
“good Qs ! torlink doesn't do that by itself, it's a command line utility for browsing and interacting with torrents, which makes it a perfect raw input to your favorite flavor of automation and state controls. For example, I wanted to explore this framework called swamp, so figured automating movie downloads with an agent as a good use case. I leveraged the framework to define my job schedule & title list, and everything 'just worked' after a bit of dev TLC. Heres a reference”
“You can expose your smb share with Tailscale and share it with your friend. You might to swap the port because most ISPs block the smb port”
“Thanks! True, sometimes we overthink it for nothing 😄 Syncthing has a web UI and an official Docker image, so your buddy can do it all by clicking 👍 https://syncthing.net https://hub.docker.com/r/syncthing/syncthing setup guide ici https://github.com/syncthing/syncthing/blob/main/README-Docker.md”