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Comment by JaneLovesDotNet | Hacker News Reader

I've been using localsend, mostly without issues. This thread has made me discover pairdrop.net and I have to say it's miles better. I've switched all my devices over now. The iOS integration with the provided shortcut + permanent pairing, in particular, is really good.

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I have kept a list of other similar file sharing tools to send files p2p https://gist.github.com/SMUsamaShah/fd6e275e44009b72f64d0570...

Could you add https://drop.lol to the list (also open source)?

Disclaimer: I'm the author of drop.lol.

Your website hijacks the "Back" button (e.g., when I press CMD+[). That's a big no.

My apologies, this is not intentional, just has been an issue I have had always forgotten about. I'll take another look at it now.

Thanks for reminding me.

Update: Fixed. (Expected this to require a rewrite but... it was just a matter of passing one option to react-router.)

It still hijacks back button on Brave/Chrome.

Have you tried clearing cache? (I've configured the server to be a bit more aggressive about caching to improve load speeds, but JS bundle updates should be available instantly.)

I've just tested on Chromium 118.0.5993.70, Firefox 118.0.2 and Safari (iOS 17.0.3) and the issue seems to be gone.

Back button works for me on Firefox 118.0.2 (Linux). Posting because the other guy might not respond, I think the bug made him a little mad.

Just added

A table with feature checkboxes for comparison would be nice.

I actually have switched to Localsend from Pairdrop. My experience is that is Pairdrop is slow especially compared to Localsend. This is while hosting the application on my local network.

I do prefer the WebApp approach so I don't have to install something on each machine before sharing files, but the bug ticket in Pairdrop does not make me hopeful for a good solution (see: https://github.com/schlagmichdoch/PairDrop/issues/44)

Are you able to achieve similar performance in Pairdrop that you did with Localsend?

I haven't compared performance, as it's not a bottleneck for me. A 70mb file took a few seconds. Localsend could very well be faster, being a native app.

I don't know. After discovering PairDrop too, thanks to comments here, I've been testing it out to see if it could replace Warpinator [1] as a means to send files & directories between my PC and my Android phone when I'm at home.

First impression has been quite disappointing... I installed the PWA to my phone's home screen. Then opened up and paired with my PC as trusted device. Tried to send a PDF file from PC to phone, a dialog shows up with

File Received. PC has sent: file.pdf. Close/Download.

Upon clicking Download, Firefox (which is configured in Android as the default web browser) opens up, on the Homepage tab. Nothing else happens, and the file isn't downloaded. So I'm left pretty much confused about what should have happened vs. what did actually happen.

(EDIT: Turns out installing the PWA from Firefox doesn't work as well as doing the same from Chrome. The latter does actually integrate it as a real Android app, and it then works as expected. The Firefox integration of PWAs with Android is a bit lacking, it seems.)

Good thing about Warpinator (and something I use a lot) is that you can enable accepting files without confirmation, and then you can drag & drop a whole folder to have it appear on the other device as-is. Something extremely useful but that I doubt web apps can achieve.

[1]: https://github.com/linuxmint/warpinator

SyncThing works really well after you set it up. It's not as straightforward as pairdrop but it has served me well.

You should know that WebRTC is not ideal for this use-case, it has inherent performance and discovery issues. All web-based solutions are flawed until hypothetically the browsers and/or WebRTC step up their game. Fine for a pdf or something, but try it with large files and you’ll very likely have a bad time.

I must say LocalSend seems pretty great (even though they’re a “direct competitor” to my app https://payload.app/ )

I was able to copy 4GB+ files over WebRTC from Safari (iOS) to Firefox (Linux) without hiccups. The speed is not great though most of the time.

any plans for android app in future?

Yeah for sure. Lack of mobile the biggest downside right now.

Send an email and I can put you in the announcement list (1-2 posts per year tops).

Have you looked at Tauri mobile or it isn't capable yet?

Better than AirDrop too, which shows a notification and then you totally forget where the file went.

Been running my own PairDrop docker container for some months now and it has been amazing.

What's the value prop of running your own instance vs just using pairdrop.net infra itself?

Running it on your own infrastructure?

That's not a value proposition. That's more of a definition :-P

I'm thinking things along the lines of privacy, security, speed, etc

Lots of reasons to self host things for this privacy is a big one but owning a service instead of renting means you don’t need to worry about the landlord or service provider raising prices or kicking you out.

SnapDrop/PairDrop is famous for going offline sometimes. It happened to me once.

>I have to say it's miles better

In what ways?

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