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Show HN: HTML5 clone of OS X AirDrop – Easy P2P file transfers in a browser

165 points by szimek 12y ago

panbartek 12y ago
seriously cool stuff
0x0 12y ago
Cool, but one major advantage to airdrop is that it doesn't require a local network at all, so you can airdrop even without any wifi AP in range.
- szimek 12y ago
  Sure, we mention it even in the README (https://github.com/cowbell/sharedrop/blob/master/README.md https://github.com/cowbell/sharedrop/blob/master/README.md). There's probably a workaround if you have a phone with internet access - you could create a local WiFi network on it and connect to ShareDrop through it. Haven't tried it though.
  - katowulf 12y ago
    And one advantage to this is that it anything that can view a web page can reach it. I don't have to ask my grandma to install an app on her phone to get a picture on her desktop computer from me : )
atmosx 12y ago
really cool and helpful.
skrowl 12y ago
It sounded interesting until: Allow www.sharedrop.io to run "Adobe Flash"? Then: We're really sorry, but your browser is not supported. Please use the latest Chrome for Desktop or Android or Opera. Firefox support is coming soon! So basically, this is a webkit app, not a HTML5 app?
- derefr 12y ago
  Something can be supported by an HTML5 standard, where all browsers have agreed to implement that standard, but only a few have gotten around to it yet. (Not sure if that's the case here.)
- szimek 12y ago
  No idea why it asked for Flash. At this moment the app works only in Chrome and Opera, because Firefox doesn't support HTML5 FileSystem API. There's a polyfill for that, but we had some issues with it, so we've decided to release it anyway. We'll continue working on Firefox support. The whole source code is available on GitHub (https://github.com/cowbell/sharedrop https://github.com/cowbell/sharedrop), so anyone can help.
  - alexjh 12y ago
    I'm running Chrome version 26.0.1410.63 on Linux, and I'm getting the not supported error message. Is there a minimum Chrome version?
    - szimek 12y ago
      I think it worked since 32. The current stable Chrome version is 33.
  - higherpurpose 12y ago
    This reminds me of how awfully behind IE is in HTML5 development. If even Firefox doesn't have this feature, IE might not get it for at least another 2 years. I don't think Microsoft has even announced support for WebRTC in any future IE version yet.
- pjmlp 12y ago
  Webkit is the new IE.
- headShrinker 12y ago
  Chrome doesn't use Webkit anymore. Safari does and it's not supported by this website.
gugol 12y ago
Cool but this isn't really P2P since it uploads the file to the server and then downloads it on the other side.
snikch 12y ago
I had a look at doing this myself recently to do iPhone -> Laptop transfers. Does this work for mobile -> desktop? I didn't think that WebRTC was available on mobile safari and therefore wouldn't work.
- szimek 12y ago
  It depends on what you mean by "mobile" :) It works between Chrome on Android and desktop. Unfortunately, Safari (neither desktop nor mobile) doesn't support WebRTC.
  - dhfromkorea 12y ago
    This is really cool. I am curious why Chrome on iOS wasn't made available yet? (i.e. if there was technical roadblock that made it difficult for you to do so.)
nanch 12y ago
Something similar (with a server in the middle) for android<->computer is EZ Drop: http://ez.dropper.co http://ez.dropper.co
- abemassry 12y ago
  Another one with a server in the middle: https://wsend.net/upload https://wsend.net/upload
NathanKP 12y ago
This is really amazing! I had a bit of trouble on my first attempt because I was connected to a VPN, so ShareDrop was considering me to be in the 10.* range (my local IP address on the VPN) while my coworker on the same router showed up in the 192.* range. I was able to send him a file, but he obviously couldn't send me one back because he wasn't connected to the same VPN. Once I disconnected from the VPN then ShareDrop starting using my local 192.* IP address instead of my remote VPN address and it worked both ways.
- nashashmi 12y ago
  I believe it is the public IP address and not the local IP address that brings everyone to the same page.
  - jonalmeida 12y ago
    I don't think that's true. I'm connected to a VPN using the built-in VPN client but none of my traffic is going through it (i.e. Send all traffic over VPN connection is unchecked) and my public IP is still the one that my phone has. EDIT: It seems that the displayed IP is only incorrect, but the service still works over your local IP.
- conductor 12y ago
  Does this mean that any JavaScript code can determine the client's local IP addresses? Then it can be used for identification, I think browsers should let the users white-list the sites which are allowed to use WebRTC.
  - szimek 12y ago
    It seems so. I was a bit surprised myself, but this data is taken from the info that browsers send to each other to determine the best path for P2P connection. The actual code for determining local IP is taken from http://net.ipcalf.com http://net.ipcalf.com.
gabrielstuff 12y ago
Nice one !
utopkara 12y ago
Noob question: It seems like websockets is more appropriate for sending files to peers, why would they go for webrtc?
- arcameron 12y ago
  No central server to intercept the file in transit
rainmaking 12y ago
Holy fucking shit this is the best thing since sliced bread. You don't know how much I hate emailing file attachments.
- szimek 12y ago
  Hopefully, we'll add sending files between networks pretty soon as well. However, it's already possible with similar WebRTC based services like https://www.sharefest.me/ https://www.sharefest.me/ or https://rtccopy.com/ https://rtccopy.com/.
  - rainmaking 12y ago
    Thanks! Ironically, most of my file emailing does in fact take place within the same network.
    - nashashmi 12y ago
      Why no use of SMB networks? Always puzzled me.
      - rainmaking 12y ago
        Because configuring SMB on each machine is hard and takes time.
  - rainmaking 12y ago
    sharefest and rtcopy suffer of complexity suckage, please hurry :)
rpowers 12y ago
Looks like a clone of my friends page: http://www.sumodrop.com http://www.sumodrop.com *edit: I guess 'clone' is too strong. I meant to imply it has similar functionality, not that it is carbon copied. Yes, I goofed.
- RyanZAG 12y ago
  This one even works on Firefox. Nice.
- rkuykendall-com 12y ago
  > Looks like a clone... Sorry, I know you probably feel very strongly about your friend's app, but it doesn't LOOK anything like it, and the functionality is clearly copied from AirDrop. I doubt the ShareDrop developers had ever heard of your friend's app.
- szimek 12y ago
  Pretty cool. It does upload the files to S3 though, right? ShareDrop in theory should be much faster (especially on local network) and more secure, as it sends files directly between devices without any server in the middle.
  - rpowers 12y ago
    True. I think the difference would be more obvious with popular files. Say you're at a lecture with 400+ students around you and you want to share some content. Hitting an S3 bucket might make more sense than handling 400+ connections locally.
christiangenco 12y ago
Very cool! I love the P2P aspect. I have a similar project that drops files in your dropbox account: http://dbinbox.com http://dbinbox.com
zacinbusiness 12y ago
This is awesome and it makes me wonder about other potential capabilities. Could a similar method be used to create two-way text chat, for instance?
- szimek 12y ago
  Sure. WebRTC allows you to send any data, audio and video directly between peers. Though to be honest there are much easier ways to create text chat.
  - zacinbusiness 12y ago
    Oh I was thinking about a collaboration scenario. Something next door to pair programming where two people are working on a document together but just not simultaneously.
thearn4 12y ago
Great stuff! I'm hosting a programming meetup this friday at a coffee shop, seems like a good opportunity to put it through it's paces.
headShrinker 12y ago
"We're really sorry, but your browser is not supported. Please use the latest Chrome for Desktop or Android or Opera. Firefox support is coming soon!" What could possibly be the reason they wouldn't support webkit based browsers? Safari 7.0.2 OS 10.9.2
- teleclimber 12y ago
  Because it uses webrtc. http://caniuse.com/#feat=rtcpeerconnection http://caniuse.com/#feat=rtcpeerconnection
barbs 12y ago
A cross-platform (but not web-based) open-source LAN file-transfer tool that I've used in the past is dukto: https://code.google.com/p/dukto/ https://code.google.com/p/dukto/
rchgonzaga 12y ago
awesome ... super cool !
chriscareycode 12y ago
It's an EmberJS app :)
- szimek 12y ago
  Yes it is :)
marquis 12y ago
I opened this with the Hamachi VPN open, and suddenly could share files with my computer on the other side of the world. I have a Mac so usually do this via the built-in sharing but if it were Windows it's certainly easier than messing with Samba.
nashashmi 12y ago
I believe the people of Qatar will have an issue with this because they all use a single public IP address. So any Qatari could send a another Qatari a file if they were all to log on.
katowulf 12y ago
And it uses Firebase, my favorite real-time service! Awesome stuff gents.
widdma 12y ago
This is really nicely done, but it'd be nice to have some sound and/or popup notification when it's running in the background.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
lerxst 12y ago
This is really cool! Initially, I tried using this between a computer on my 2.4 GHz band and a computer on my 5 GHz band, and I guess the JavaScript wasn't able to determine the local IP addresses. However, after switching to the same frequency it worked.
chewbacha 12y ago
wow, I'm blown away
est 12y ago
it got my vmware IP address, not the actual one.
modarts 12y ago
this is the kind of stuff I come to HN for. Well done sir.
sfaruque 12y ago
I'm getting transfer speeds of ~970KB/s (checking using iStat). Averaging nearly 1MB/s isn't bad, but I'm curious, could this go faster?
- szimek 12y ago
  Yeah, it probably could. I think that https://www.sharefest.me/ https://www.sharefest.me/ has faster transfer speeds, especially that it allows you to download the same file from more than one peer.
hmhrex 12y ago
Wasn't sure if this would be useful to me without mobile support, but man, it really saved my ass today. Thanks for this.
saltcookie 12y ago
U all should check out http://sumodrop.com http://sumodrop.com
- saltcookie 12y ago
  it works on mobile browsers also
saltcookie 12y ago
u guys should check out http://sumodrop.com http://sumodrop.com
ulfw 12y ago
"Please use the latest Chrome for Desktop or Android or Opera." Hm yea... maybe not.

165 points by szimek 12y ago

seriously cool stuff

0x0 12y ago

Cool, but one major advantage to airdrop is that it doesn't require a local network at all, so you can airdrop even without any wifi AP in range.

szimek 12y ago
Sure, we mention it even in the README (https://github.com/cowbell/sharedrop/blob/master/README.md https://github.com/cowbell/sharedrop/blob/master/README.md). There's probably a workaround if you have a phone with internet access - you could create a local WiFi network on it and connect to ShareDrop through it. Haven't tried it though.
- katowulf 12y ago
  And one advantage to this is that it anything that can view a web page can reach it. I don't have to ask my grandma to install an app on her phone to get a picture on her desktop computer from me : )

atmosx 12y ago

really cool and helpful.

skrowl 12y ago

It sounded interesting until: Allow www.sharedrop.io to run "Adobe Flash"? Then: We're really sorry, but your browser is not supported. Please use the latest Chrome for Desktop or Android or Opera. Firefox support is coming soon! So basically, this is a webkit app, not a HTML5 app?

derefr 12y ago
Something can be supported by an HTML5 standard, where all browsers have agreed to implement that standard, but only a few have gotten around to it yet. (Not sure if that's the case here.)
szimek 12y ago
No idea why it asked for Flash. At this moment the app works only in Chrome and Opera, because Firefox doesn't support HTML5 FileSystem API. There's a polyfill for that, but we had some issues with it, so we've decided to release it anyway. We'll continue working on Firefox support. The whole source code is available on GitHub (https://github.com/cowbell/sharedrop https://github.com/cowbell/sharedrop), so anyone can help.
- alexjh 12y ago
  I'm running Chrome version 26.0.1410.63 on Linux, and I'm getting the not supported error message. Is there a minimum Chrome version?
  - szimek 12y ago
    I think it worked since 32. The current stable Chrome version is 33.
- higherpurpose 12y ago
  This reminds me of how awfully behind IE is in HTML5 development. If even Firefox doesn't have this feature, IE might not get it for at least another 2 years. I don't think Microsoft has even announced support for WebRTC in any future IE version yet.
pjmlp 12y ago
Webkit is the new IE.
headShrinker 12y ago
Chrome doesn't use Webkit anymore. Safari does and it's not supported by this website.

gugol 12y ago

Cool but this isn't really P2P since it uploads the file to the server and then downloads it on the other side.

snikch 12y ago

I had a look at doing this myself recently to do iPhone -> Laptop transfers. Does this work for mobile -> desktop? I didn't think that WebRTC was available on mobile safari and therefore wouldn't work.

szimek 12y ago
It depends on what you mean by "mobile" :) It works between Chrome on Android and desktop. Unfortunately, Safari (neither desktop nor mobile) doesn't support WebRTC.
- dhfromkorea 12y ago
  This is really cool. I am curious why Chrome on iOS wasn't made available yet? (i.e. if there was technical roadblock that made it difficult for you to do so.)

nanch 12y ago

Something similar (with a server in the middle) for android<->computer is EZ Drop: http://ez.dropper.co http://ez.dropper.co

abemassry 12y ago
Another one with a server in the middle: https://wsend.net/upload https://wsend.net/upload

NathanKP 12y ago

This is really amazing! I had a bit of trouble on my first attempt because I was connected to a VPN, so ShareDrop was considering me to be in the 10.* range (my local IP address on the VPN) while my coworker on the same router showed up in the 192.* range. I was able to send him a file, but he obviously couldn't send me one back because he wasn't connected to the same VPN. Once I disconnected from the VPN then ShareDrop starting using my local 192.* IP address instead of my remote VPN address and it worked both ways.

nashashmi 12y ago
I believe it is the public IP address and not the local IP address that brings everyone to the same page.
- jonalmeida 12y ago
  I don't think that's true. I'm connected to a VPN using the built-in VPN client but none of my traffic is going through it (i.e. Send all traffic over VPN connection is unchecked) and my public IP is still the one that my phone has. EDIT: It seems that the displayed IP is only incorrect, but the service still works over your local IP.
conductor 12y ago
Does this mean that any JavaScript code can determine the client's local IP addresses? Then it can be used for identification, I think browsers should let the users white-list the sites which are allowed to use WebRTC.
- szimek 12y ago
  It seems so. I was a bit surprised myself, but this data is taken from the info that browsers send to each other to determine the best path for P2P connection. The actual code for determining local IP is taken from http://net.ipcalf.com http://net.ipcalf.com.

gabrielstuff 12y ago

Nice one !

utopkara 12y ago

Noob question: It seems like websockets is more appropriate for sending files to peers, why would they go for webrtc?

arcameron 12y ago
No central server to intercept the file in transit

rainmaking 12y ago

Holy fucking shit this is the best thing since sliced bread. You don't know how much I hate emailing file attachments.

szimek 12y ago
Hopefully, we'll add sending files between networks pretty soon as well. However, it's already possible with similar WebRTC based services like https://www.sharefest.me/ https://www.sharefest.me/ or https://rtccopy.com/ https://rtccopy.com/.
- rainmaking 12y ago
  Thanks! Ironically, most of my file emailing does in fact take place within the same network.
  - nashashmi 12y ago
    Why no use of SMB networks? Always puzzled me.
    - rainmaking 12y ago
      Because configuring SMB on each machine is hard and takes time.
- rainmaking 12y ago
  sharefest and rtcopy suffer of complexity suckage, please hurry :)

rpowers 12y ago

Looks like a clone of my friends page: http://www.sumodrop.com http://www.sumodrop.com *edit: I guess 'clone' is too strong. I meant to imply it has similar functionality, not that it is carbon copied. Yes, I goofed.

RyanZAG 12y ago
This one even works on Firefox. Nice.
rkuykendall-com 12y ago
> Looks like a clone... Sorry, I know you probably feel very strongly about your friend's app, but it doesn't LOOK anything like it, and the functionality is clearly copied from AirDrop. I doubt the ShareDrop developers had ever heard of your friend's app.
szimek 12y ago
Pretty cool. It does upload the files to S3 though, right? ShareDrop in theory should be much faster (especially on local network) and more secure, as it sends files directly between devices without any server in the middle.
- rpowers 12y ago
  True. I think the difference would be more obvious with popular files. Say you're at a lecture with 400+ students around you and you want to share some content. Hitting an S3 bucket might make more sense than handling 400+ connections locally.

christiangenco 12y ago

Very cool! I love the P2P aspect. I have a similar project that drops files in your dropbox account: http://dbinbox.com http://dbinbox.com

zacinbusiness 12y ago

This is awesome and it makes me wonder about other potential capabilities. Could a similar method be used to create two-way text chat, for instance?

szimek 12y ago
Sure. WebRTC allows you to send any data, audio and video directly between peers. Though to be honest there are much easier ways to create text chat.
- zacinbusiness 12y ago
  Oh I was thinking about a collaboration scenario. Something next door to pair programming where two people are working on a document together but just not simultaneously.

thearn4 12y ago

Great stuff! I'm hosting a programming meetup this friday at a coffee shop, seems like a good opportunity to put it through it's paces.

headShrinker 12y ago

"We're really sorry, but your browser is not supported. Please use the latest Chrome for Desktop or Android or Opera. Firefox support is coming soon!" What could possibly be the reason they wouldn't support webkit based browsers? Safari 7.0.2 OS 10.9.2

teleclimber 12y ago
Because it uses webrtc. http://caniuse.com/#feat=rtcpeerconnection http://caniuse.com/#feat=rtcpeerconnection

barbs 12y ago

A cross-platform (but not web-based) open-source LAN file-transfer tool that I've used in the past is dukto: https://code.google.com/p/dukto/ https://code.google.com/p/dukto/

rchgonzaga 12y ago

awesome ... super cool !

chriscareycode 12y ago

It's an EmberJS app :)

szimek 12y ago
Yes it is :)

marquis 12y ago

I opened this with the Hamachi VPN open, and suddenly could share files with my computer on the other side of the world. I have a Mac so usually do this via the built-in sharing but if it were Windows it's certainly easier than messing with Samba.

nashashmi 12y ago

I believe the people of Qatar will have an issue with this because they all use a single public IP address. So any Qatari could send a another Qatari a file if they were all to log on.

katowulf 12y ago

And it uses Firebase, my favorite real-time service! Awesome stuff gents.

widdma 12y ago

This is really nicely done, but it'd be nice to have some sound and/or popup notification when it's running in the background.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

lerxst 12y ago

This is really cool! Initially, I tried using this between a computer on my 2.4 GHz band and a computer on my 5 GHz band, and I guess the JavaScript wasn't able to determine the local IP addresses. However, after switching to the same frequency it worked.

chewbacha 12y ago

wow, I'm blown away

est 12y ago

it got my vmware IP address, not the actual one.

modarts 12y ago

this is the kind of stuff I come to HN for. Well done sir.

sfaruque 12y ago

I'm getting transfer speeds of ~970KB/s (checking using iStat). Averaging nearly 1MB/s isn't bad, but I'm curious, could this go faster?

szimek 12y ago
Yeah, it probably could. I think that https://www.sharefest.me/ https://www.sharefest.me/ has faster transfer speeds, especially that it allows you to download the same file from more than one peer.

hmhrex 12y ago

Wasn't sure if this would be useful to me without mobile support, but man, it really saved my ass today. Thanks for this.

saltcookie 12y ago

U all should check out http://sumodrop.com http://sumodrop.com

saltcookie 12y ago
it works on mobile browsers also

saltcookie 12y ago

u guys should check out http://sumodrop.com http://sumodrop.com

ulfw 12y ago

"Please use the latest Chrome for Desktop or Android or Opera." Hm yea... maybe not.