Show HN: BookmarkFS – Store files as Chrome bookmarks that sync between devices | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: BookmarkFS – Store files as Chrome bookmarks that sync between devices

github.com

Great to see people hacking just for the sake of hacking. And who knows, someone somewhere may actually find a good use for it. Thanks for sharing.

Clever! I like a good discovery like this!

Rather than infinite storage, I’d be interested in using it for just the occasional file transfer.

I still hate how hard it is to transfer files between two devices in 2022

It's really not at all.

https://github.com/magic-wormhole/magic-wormhole - get things from one computer to another, safely

https://github.com/schollz/croc - Easily and securely send things from one computer to another

https://upload.disroot.org/ - 2GB per file, end to end encrypted, source: https://github.com/ldidry/lufi, other instances: https://alt.framasoft.org/framadrop/

https://datash.co/ - end to end encrypted, made for transfer between two devices

https://send.tresorit.com/ - 5GB per file, end to end encrypted

https://github.com/kern/filepizza - WebRTC + STUN/TURN file transfer between multiple devices

https://instant.io/ - WebTorrent transfers between browsers

https://wormhole.app/ - share files with end to end encryption and a link that expires, or keeps working after closing browser

https://toffeeshare.com/ - p2p, end to end encrypted

https://wetransfer.com/ - emails link to recipient of file

https://docsend.com/ - can protect files with email/pass verification. can revoke access or eSign documents

and many, many more. these are just the ones I've seen that are geared towards direct transfer between two computers, but there's hundreds more sites that offer free file storage, even without an account or any personal info needed.

That's fair. I more meant that there's not a native way built into OS/browsers that will do it (without installing these additional tools). Firefox had it but got rid of it: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/what-happened-firefox-s...

I've resulted to just uploading to my Dropbox/Google Drive and pulling it down to another device, but I'm always worried about Google deleting my account if it somehow finds the ebook/whatever objectionable due to a trigger word.

EDIT: Okay, I didn't know about https://instant.io/ that might be interesting for non-sensitive/non-personal transfers. Thank you for sharing!

Instant io is great. File limit is how much can fit into ram

FWIW on Mac you can copy-paste a file between devices using the iCloud paste thingy.

I personally use KDE Connect ([1]) on Linux; I use GNOME on my computers but luckily there's also a shell extension that's compatible with the protocol which integrates nicely with my desktop [2]. There's also a Windows binary available [3] that supports most features I believe.

This tool allows for file sharing/browsing over LAN/WiFi as well as sharing notifications (including quick responses), remote keyboard support, integration with SMS messaging, and all other kinds of cool stuff. For example, KDE Connect also pops up a media player control window notification on your phone if you start playing a video in your browser, which is super useful because now my smart watch can pause my browser. Everything is end-to-end encrypted through (basically) standard SSH so you're not relying on cloud stuff to make it work.

Android has nerfed keyboard sync (no background access to the clipboard without rooting your phone unless you're Google or the manufacturer) but there are other benefits as well. I rooted my phone just to get this feature back and I've got to say that copy/pasting my TOTP codes makes 2FA so much easier to deal with.

Apple devices aren't as well-supported yet as the restrictive app store policies and lack of developers were a problem for the KDE folks for a while. The iOS version has recently picked up some speed and I see there's a macOS version as well now, so if you're on those platforms you could give it a go and see what happens.

[1]: https://kdeconnect.kde.org/

[2]: https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/1319/gsconnect/

[2]: https://apps.microsoft.com/store/detail/kde-connect/9N93MRMS...

Just following up to say that KDE Connect works surprisingly well on Windows, too.

Or for more permanent use cases (since someone is signed into Chrome), Syncthing is an excellent tool.

Can we build something like this for social media? Post encrypted text and images to store content, use an api to fetch and decrypt in the app?

IIRC people used to take advantage of free google photos by uploading segments of larger files pretending to be photos. I believe there were even front ends that handled everything. But eventually they figured out to re-encode the image on upload which ruined the game. They could probably use the same tool against text but it would be a lot easier to workaround.

https://github.com/pixelomer/discord-fs I know this exists, don't think anyone's done the twitter thing yet

This is interesting. Thanks for making.

Can the extension be used to interact with app in mobile?

Is there anything in Google/Chrome TOS that might make this illegal? I'd hate to wake up one day to find all my Google accounts suspended.

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