File Sharing

The best peer-to-peer file sharing application on the web.

Hosted online at file-transfer.free-app.net. I have published an article on my website that goes deeper into the internals of this project.

How To Use

Go to the application. Click on Create Room. The application generates a unique share link. Click on it to copy to the clipboard. Share it with anyone you want to exchange files with. When they join using the link, a direct WebRTC connection is established between your browsers.

Files are transferred directly between browsers. Your files never touch the server; the server only facilitates signaling to establish a WebRTC connection. Once connected, it's just you and your peer.

How It Works

When you create a room, the application generates a unique code invisible to the server. To establish a direct peer-to-peer connection, the browsers communicate using encrypted messages via a database-less signaling server. After the connection is established, data transfer occurs directly between the browsers.

Features

• Browser-based: no installation required
• Two-way uploads
• Upload/Download many files
• No limits
• No databases
• It just works

Self Host

Run with Docker

docker run -e PORT=3000 -p 3000:3000 freeappnet/file-transfer:latest

Or use Docker Compose

services:
  file-transfer:
    image: freeappnet/file-transfer:${TAGNAME:-latest}
    pull_policy: always
    restart: unless-stopped
    ports:
      - 3000
    environment:
      - PORT=3000

Additionally, GitHub releases contain linux amd64 banary. Just run it. The default port is 3000.

Technologies

• WebRPC with peer-lite for peer-to-peer communication
• Uploads folders with client-zip, for single file download
• Uses StreamSaver.js to download files as a writable stream
• HTTP/SSE signaling Go server
• Preact frontend

Development

This project uses node and go. Use nvm to activate the correct version of node.

Important dev commands are

• pnpm dev - Starts a dev web server at localhost:5173
• pnpm server:dev - Starts backend server at localhost:6173
• pnpm preview - Launches the server the same way as after docker build at localhost:3000
• pnpm test - Run unit tests
• pnpm test:e2e - Launches end-to-end tests. Works only in UI mode, cannot be CI automated at the moment