
Ask HN: Why is inter-device file sharing still a hassle? - the_duke
Imagine these scenarios:<p>* You sit in some pub with a few friends. You show them a video you filmed yesterday on your phone. You&#x27;re speakers are really bad, and you want to send it to a friend who has better speakers.<p>--&gt; You try to send the video over What&#x27;s App. You discover you have no cell reception. You give up.<p>* You are at a conference, about to give a talk. For some reason, your MacBook won&#x27;t work with the projector. You want to copy the presentation to some other laptop. The WiFi is overloaded.<p>--&gt; You spend 5 minutes finding someone who still carries a USB stick and transfer the files.<p>* You are in an airplane, and you have a bunch of company documents stored on your laptop, which you want to read on your tablet. You forgot your micro USB cable.<p>--&gt; You are angry at yourself for not installing a file sharing app and for forgetting to send yourself the documents with GMail and downloading them on the tablet.<p>Everytime I run into one of those situations, I just get angry that there is no easy solution, and most of the time we have to resort to some clutch, like relying on a centralized service like email or messenger apps.<p>How do we still have this problem in 2016, where we all carry multiple supposedly inter-connected and interoperable devices?<p>There is an endless amount of file sharing apps for iOS and Android. There are countless protocols and options for discovering devices and sharing files  (including &quot;ancient&quot; options like Samba, NFS and FTP).<p>Why is there no universally accepted standard that facilitates device discovery and file sharing between devices over WiFi AND Bluetooth, with implementations installed by default on every device?<p>Am I alone in seeing a need here?
======
jwr
You are not alone. This is one of those problems that we seemingly can't
solve, mostly because there is no business in it. Ask anyone if they have a
problem sharing files, and most people will say no (witness the responses in
this thread), even though you are perfectly correct that file sharing is a
complete and utter mess. And when buying a new phone, practically no one will
consider "easy file sharing" as a feature worth paying for.

Apple was traditonally better at this sort of thing ("just works"), but a) it
doesn't actually "just work", because their software quality is not up to par,
and b) the lack of interoperability means this is only useful if you live in
an Apple-only world.

In general, I'd say it will stay like this. Unfortunately.

Other similar examples: E-mail (yes, SMTP and E-mail clients, it all sucks
badly, and we can't agree on how to improve it) and instant messaging.

~~~
wpietri
Great point. Having there be a business is important.

It's one of those things that seems simple (move 1 file 2 inches) but is
really complex, with a lot of possible mechanisms, protocols, OSes, devices,
and edge cases.

When the Dropbox people were looking for money, VCs would say, "But there are
already plenty of ways to keep files in sync." They'd say, "Do you use any of
them regularly?" The answer was always no. There was a giant gap that nobody
had filled.

And they started with an easier problem, which is one person with multiple
devices who wants one folder to be in two places. No features, just a folder
that's always the same. (And they started with just desktop OSes.)
Transferring files seamlessly between devices owned by different people on
demand is much harder. Especially given how mobile OSes have deemphasized the
notion of "file" altogether.

So yes, I don't expect a solution either.

~~~
nerdponx
> mobile OSes have deemphasized the notion of "file" altogether.

This to me hits on the real problem. Filesharing is easy when all files are
strings of ones and zeros, to be freely interpreted by programs and stored in
a generic filesystem. When your operating system treats files as atomic things
that can only be managed by a specific program baked into the OS, filesharing
becomes much more difficult.

This is a classic Apple dark pattern that spread to the rest of the industry
and is now a poison that can't be easily purged.

~~~
ACS_Solver
This is perhaps my least favorite thing about Apple's software concept, but at
the same time I have to admit they've made it simple for the masses, and it
works. The iOS file concept seems to be closer to how people without knowledge
of computers perceive things, and matches what I saw in computer learners 20
years ago. People would think their documents were gone if they couldn't
launch Word, or were confused by getting a file on a floppy that they couldn't
open because they didn't have the right program installed.

Technically, you have a generic filesystem, and individual programs can load
files from that, there's no direct relationship between the files and
programs. But in the mind of a typical non-tech user, files are something that
belong to a program.

~~~
wpietri
Yeah, I think it's a losing game to ask users to do more work because we
technical people think it better or more correct.

------
cs702
Pretty much everyone agrees that if companies like Google and Apple made local
file sharing easy and cross-platform, all of us -- all of society -- would
benefit.

However, these companies have financial incentives to do the opposite: they
want users to do everything within tightly controlled platforms like Google
Drive and iCloud, and they want to avoid commoditization at all costs. The
last thing these companies want is for users to be able _easily_ to transfer
all their videos, music, photos, work files, contacts, calendar data,
bookmarks, etc. from one platform to another.

The behavior of these companies is analogous to the behavor of AT&T at the
beginning of the 20th century. AT&T had the largest telephone network with the
most users, and smaller independent phone companies wanted to interconnect
with it, but AT&T refused to do so, causing users to leave the smaller
networks for AT&T's. Users of the smaller networks were unable to connect with
users of the largest network. It wasn't until after the US federal government
challenged AT&T for monopolistic behavior that this changed. In 1913, AT&T
settled with the government in the "Kingsbury Committment," which required
AT&T to allow non-competing independent telephone companies to interconnect
with the AT&T network.[1]

I suspect the only way we can get easy and cross-platform data portability
(local and otherwise) is via government intervention -- that is, if the
government forces companies to do it for society's benefit (for example, by
legally requiring compatibility with open data-sharing and app-interconnection
standards), at the expense of user lock-in and corporate profits.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingsbury_Commitment](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingsbury_Commitment)

~~~
wtbob
I agree with everything but your final two paragraphs; I suspect that a
government-mandated solution would be horrible in all sorts of ways (poor
security, a mandated backdoor &c.).

My hope is that the propellerheads in those companies are able to figure out a
way to sneak this killer feature past their respective marketing people.

~~~
cs702
Government-mandated solutions can take many forms, some of which are less
intrusive and/or more reasonable than others.

For example, if you live in the US, you are legally _required_ by the
government to drive on the right side of the road (to avoid the chaos of the
past, when each US city and state had different driving rules), and you are
also legally _required_ to buy car insurance (to make sure irresponsible
drivers who cause more accidents don't get a free ride from responsible
drivers). I think most people would agree these are reasonable government
solutions that are not too intrusive.

Perhaps it might be possible to come up with reasonable "rules of the road"
that are not too intrusive and which the government can enforce so all of us
-- all of society -- can easily share data between applications and platforms?

~~~
reitanqild
For all its warts governments seems to be mostly good.

It seems however they should however be balanced by a powerful population.

------
creshal
> Why is inter-device file sharing still a hassle?

Because every vendor and their dog wants to push their own proprietary toy
solution to lock in users, instead of using any of the existing standards.

~~~
userbinator
No doubt DRM has a part in it too. In fact I'd say file sharing has gotten
_more_ difficult precisely because of those business desires to ultimately
control how people share content. The fact that locked-down platforms like iOS
even _hide_ the concept of a filesystem from the user is a good indication of
this trend. Android isn't quite there yet, but you can see it in their
gradually degrading support for removable media.

 _\-- > You spend 5 minutes finding someone who still carries a USB stick and
transfer the files._

I still do, and perhaps 5-10 years ago, when file sharing as a whole was
more... healthy, almost everyone did. MP3 players (except Apple's) also
doubled as convenient portable USB mass storage devices. Before that, floppies
and null modem cables (remember those?) were pretty popular.

------
micro_softy
There is a universally accepted standard. And I believe the usual suspects
have each had it implemented on their manufactured "smartphones". Each device
can put its network interface into AP mode.

I think the marketing term is "WiFi Direct". But good luck getting Apple and
Samsung devices to both discover and associate with each other.

If it feels like you're continually being corralled into sharing files _with
the person next to you_ via a third party's servers and an open, insecure,
untrusted network ("the internet"), then maybe you are.

It is not necessary to use the internet and third parties to do something as
simple as _transfer files to the person sitting next to you_ (without using
removable media), but it's easy for companies to convince users that this is
the only way to do it.

And in most cases no convincing is even necessary because users fail to
consider the alternatives.

------
Odenwaelder
What's the problem with Bluetooth? File sharing between smartphones and
computers has worked every single time for me, and it's natively build into
all devices.

~~~
douche
I have never gotten a Bluetooth device to ever work. I've heard tell of people
using Bluetooth, but I think it's an urban myth.

~~~
api
It works for keyboards and mice made by the same vendor as your OS but
otherwise it's junk. Terrible protocol.

------
curun1r
Randall made the same observation some time ago:

[https://xkcd.com/949/](https://xkcd.com/949/)

~~~
paulddraper
That was years ago. The crazy thing is that it is still true.

------
jhanji
I have been working on this area for 2 years now and created AirMount
[https://www.airmountapp.com](https://www.airmountapp.com). You don’t need the
cloud, internet, Bluetooth or USB. Today it works between iOS and Mac, and now
we are building it out for Windows and Android. I dream of the day when
sharing files with any nearby device will just work like AirMount does today,
irrespective of their OS. The industry needs to collaborate to make open
standards, but in the meantime I intend to push the limits of what is possible
already.

~~~
questionr
looks interesting, does it support the transferring of pdf/epub files from
iBook?

~~~
jhanji
Yes, AirMount integrates with the native iOS Photos app for accessing photos
and videos directly from the Mac’s Finder. It supports all file types through
a built-in “Drive” where you can store PDFs, documents, email attachments and
documents from the Mac that you want to carry in your phone, without sending
anything to the cloud. From the Drive, you can preview those PDFs and files,
and share via other apps. I love that I can just drag and drop stuff between
my devices and it feels very natural, personal and quick.

~~~
questionr
just to confirm, specifically I can access all files stored in iBook?

~~~
jhanji
iOS does not permit another app to access iBooks data. So I would suggest
storing the PDFs directly in AirMount app, so you can access them from your
Mac.

------
qwertyuiop924
The closest thing we've got is Beam, here on Android, which Apple and MS
should seriously consider adopting. The only problem is that it does require
some hardware support, IIRC.

Before that, the best thing for file sharing _was_ Bump, which was kind of
hacky, and required internet as a result, but _did_ work. Sadly, Bump is no
more.

As for sharing files with _yourself_ , my answer is typically SFTP, which is
excellent, provided it does what you want. It also works well for transferring
files at conferences, providing your slides aren't to big to make the
roundtrip in good time. A bit hacky, yes, but it works.

~~~
mrestko
I thought Bump was a pretty cool idea. It's a shame that it didn't take off.

~~~
qwertyuiop924
Beam is hardware-assisted Bump, essentially. The protocol is radically
different, but the UX is the same. Unfortunately, that seems to be android-
only.

------
brownbat
> implementations installed by default on every device

That's not a trivial ask. Security experts might wonder, "Wait, what new entry
point are you mandating on my devices? To solve which problem?"

They'd caution that several subsets of this problem are already solved,
lowering its urgency. You own both devices and have wifi? Dropbox. You have
internet access? Email or other messaging services / file lockers. Both
devices are the same ecosystem? Bluetooth / AirDrop / WifiDirect / Beam. You
are near a gas station or in a house with a junk drawer? $1 USB stick. You
didn't forget your cable? Cable. You are both developers? You may already have
some arcane solution, depending on the platforms...

So, while it'd be nice to ensure two unacquainted technophobes who meet in the
woods have the ability to move some file from one's mp3 player to the other's
digital camera, despite never having installed any software or brought any
drives or cables to help, we're slicing off thinner and thinner portions of
salami here.

Also consider other approaches. More ubiquitous (functioning) internet solves
all of the above, along with several other problems.

Absent that, foresight would have prevented a few of the test cases. Foresight
isn't trivial, I know, but that opens up other approaches. Like maybe an alarm
on a device that rings if the device gets too far away from some other little
chip, which you can stick on a cable you want to never forget. A shim to
friend and create a temporary shared Dropbox directory with strangers nearby
would require advanced installation, but might be useful.

I don't mean to diminish the frustration of these situations. If you were
talking about developing some software to help local area sharing, I'd say go
for it. But putting the bar at mandatory interconnection in all devices...
it's a high bar. The mere fact that legacy devices exist makes it impossible
to meet those constraints.

If you relax your constraints just a little, though, I suspect a few
opportunities for interesting work open up.

------
kalleboo
This was actually easiest for me during the end of the dumbphone era. All the
devices around then had Bluetooth and supported the Object Push Profile, and
there wasn't yet any DRM implemented on sending stuff like MP3 files. It was
slow but worked.

Then Apple killed Bluetooth by never supporting it well on the iPhone, and
then implemented their proprietary AirDrop (which is actually LESS reliable
for me, between Apple devices(!), than Bluetooth OPP was)

------
ynniv
A Y Combinator pitch:

 _[It] synchronizes files across your /your team's computers. It's much better
than uploading or email, because it's automatic, integrated into Windows, and
fits into the way you already work. There's also a web interface, and the
files are securely backed up to Amazon S3. [It] is kind of like taking the
best elements of subversion, trac and rsync and making them "just work" for
the average individual or team. Hackers have access to these tools, but normal
people don't._

The problem has been attacked many times, but only centralized subscription
services and hardware vendor walled gardens have succeeded as businesses.

[[https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/27532820/app.html](https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/27532820/app.html)]

~~~
macns
_The problem has been attacked many times, but .. have succeeded as
businesses._

That is the problem right there. It shouldn't be a business. It should be a
standard for all devices e.g keyboard and mice work out of the box everywhere.

There was an open source file system aiming for just that, including internet-
based storage named 'opfs' or something but I can't find it anywhere now.

~~~
dTal
Not sure if sarcasm... do you mean IPFS?

~~~
macns
yes thank you and I'm sorry, no sarcasm just plain stupidity

------
api
There is no business in it. If anything there is a powerful incentive against
anything that permits interoperation. The big guys all want to build closed
vertically integrated silos, and probably more than half if all startups are
trying to do the same or position themselves for an acquisition by building
entirely within someone else's silo.

Open source is the only way this could be fixed, and unfortunately that is
mostly the kingdom of developers who already think this is a solved problem
via ssh, virtual networks, etc. Developers tend not to care about end user
problems unless... well... there is a business in it!

------
buddapalm
A few perspectives:

1). Agree with many that Bluetooth (or another open protocol) is really the
way to solve, but the incentives are low to implement universally as the
common operating systems in our devices have shifted dramatically in the last
10 years.

2) remember the brief peer-to-peer revolution? Bit torrent, kazaa and emule
were (are) pretty effective but have a bad reputation from being used for file
piracy.

3). Because of #2, it's been safer for businesses to conform to the SaaS
models / garden walls. (Monetizing them is also better understood)

------
chrisamanse
Bluetooth used to be common until vendors started implementing their own file-
sharing or just focused on sharing files in the "cloud", which is really
inconvenient when there's no internet connection (not to mention, even when
there is internet connection, it's really an inefficient process, bandwidth-
wise, to send someone right beside you a single file over the internet).

Maybe we should push a standard for local file-sharing so that all vendors
will implement it in their mobile operating systems.

~~~
calgoo
We need to focus more on mesh wifi networking. If Our phones could connect
directly (and they can) using wifi in a mesh, it would be quite easy to write
network clients to share data with them.

~~~
chrisamanse
FireChat
([http://www.opengarden.com/firechat.html](http://www.opengarden.com/firechat.html))
tried to do mesh network messaging, but security is hard to get right in mesh
networks, since the data passes to other clients if needed. For example in
Tor, it's great use for anonymizing end users, but it's not great for security
- I wouldn't use it to send confidential information such as credit card info.

~~~
calgoo
What about a rings of trust system? Tap your phone to someone you know etc,
and your devices know to trust each other. Add a level of trust to that, so
the apps can act accordingly. Also, make it so messages can be stored until a
PtP or relay over internet can be done.

------
z3t4
If you have IP network, It's pretty easy to setup a FTP(S) server. Just close
it when you are done with the transfers.

The problem I think is NAT, witch makes everything much harder. But it also
works as a basic firewall ... I remember the age when you used to connect your
PC directly to the Internet, and if you didn't have the latest patches you
would get the sasser virus within seconds. It would be scary running even
Linux not behind a firewall. And many devices (smart-TV's etc) now a days
expect a LAN and will be completely open.

Raise your hand if you would be OK with exposing your whole LAN to the
Internet.

Whatever you do, do not use e-mail to send files! Your e-mail will go though
many servers on the way, and will take up server disk space. And the data will
be encoded to base64 witch will make them about 30% larger. Small files <20 Mb
will be fine, but don't send Gigabytes!

------
jvns
I don't understand this either. We've had the ability to transfer single files
over a local network basically forever with netcat
[http://jvns.ca/blog/2013/10/01/day-2-netcat-
fun/](http://jvns.ca/blog/2013/10/01/day-2-netcat-fun/). This just uses TCP
and is really really simple. I use it all the time if I need to transfer a
video or something.

the problem with this (even though the basic capabilities are there!!!) is
that netcat isn't super user-friendly so people don't use it. And it's not
possible to do easily on a mobile device.

So why hasn't someone built a widely-used user-friendly application that lets
you send files over local networks using TCP? I don't know. I don't think it's
because it's too technically challenging though.

~~~
tines
Well if you're on a local network you could be using scp or rsync, both of
which do folders and at least the latter of which does compression and avoids
transferring duplicate files.

------
Dwolb
I think you're right it's always a hassle. Personally at work (we make
hardware) I take photos of our product or other products in thr market, want
to highlight interesting design choices, and put the pictures on Slack.

So I taka a photo via iOS, connect to Wifi so Dropbox uploads the photo, open
the file on my laptop, highlight and tag the feature, and put it on Slack.
It's way better than a USB cable but there's so much more technology involved
in the chain.

I think for me it's difficult to imagine a better solution though. So what's
the ideal experience? Does it fit into the existing computing paradigm or no?

------
girzel
On Android (possibly only Android, unfortunately) there's an app called "Share
via HTTP" in the fdroid repositories. Basically if your devices are on the
same LAN, you can get the file off your phone, either with an IP/port
combination, or a QR code. Obviously it would be nice if there were a desktop
equivalent so you could go the other way, but this app has really made things
a lot easier for me to move files around.

------
janci
I use HTTP, it works everywhere. On my notebook, I have a http server, on
Android phone I use TotalCommander app with HTTP server that works both for
upload and download.

------
edent
Bluetooth. It is a bit slow - especially on large video files, but you can use
it to send arbitrary files to just about any modern device.

Or, WiFi direct [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wi-
Fi_Direct](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wi-Fi_Direct) for larger files.

Now there's a problem with discoverabillity and compatibility - but that's no
different to trying to get CIFS devices talking to each other.

------
33a
[https://github.com/mafintosh/airpaste](https://github.com/mafintosh/airpaste)

------
volkanh
Check out [https://www.mimik.com](https://www.mimik.com)

Disclaimer: I used to work for mimik.

------
the_duke
Whoops, totally forgot to post the link in the first place:
[http://theduke.at/blog/develop/sad-state-of-file-
sharing/](http://theduke.at/blog/develop/sad-state-of-file-sharing/).

------
jemeshsu
This search and download by tag app
([https://www.coopla.com/filefile/](https://www.coopla.com/filefile/)) makes
it convenient. However all files are public, its iOS only, no Android, no web
and no desktop.

------
cynusx
it's definitely still a hassle but there is this great free solution that is
not very well known, at least for when there's internet on the devices:
[https://file.pizza/](https://file.pizza/)

~~~
rolfvandekrol
Nice idea, but doesn't work on iOS (Safari nor Chrome)

------
amjaeger
For a short time I had a windows 8 phone. That was the only time sending stuff
over bluetooth from computer -> phone, phone-> computer, phone -> windows
phone actually worked well. Unfortunately the rest of windows phone sucked.

------
AndrewKemendo
Why isn't browser enabled Bluetooth sharing the answer? Every phone has a
browser to use for the offline UI, every phone has Bluetooth as the transport
mechanism. Seems like a pretty simple implementation.

------
cake93
Easy solution for problems 2+3: tiny USB sticks. For example SanDisk Cruzer
Fit 32GB ($ 9) on amazon.

They have a tiny loop, but I prefer to always keep it plugged in to my laptop.

Always works.

Except with smartphones.

~~~
edent
Have you looked at USB OTG? Most Android phones will natively mount a USB
stick when plugged in.

------
basch
because everyone insists on managing their own files by hand instead of
storing them in a version controlled database with client caching

------
nxzero
Forget file sharing, offline backups & recoveries are a massive pain on
mobile, cloud, etc.

------
draw_down
Hmm, Airdrop is usually fine for me.

~~~
the_duke
AirDrop is Apple device only...

~~~
mdshw5
That shouldn't stop someone from reverse engineering it

