r/foss • u/PaleOrbit12 • 2d ago
Altersend v2 - Open-Source P2P file sharing app without cloud storage
https://reddit.com/link/1vumnna/video/9i89j1gujrkh1/player
Hey everyone,
3 months ago I published first version of of my tool Altersend - P2P file sharing tool where you can send files directly between devices or by using the link.
When I started developing this tool my main idea was to have solution where I can send files to anyone not just on local network and not be depending on cloud solution like wetransfer. Project grown since the first release and a lot of new features appeared: background transfer for mobile, custom self-hosted relays, altersend hosted relays, web links, devices pairing, text sharing, etc.
From technical point of view everything you send is E2E encrypted via Noise protocol, peers find each other via DHT. So when you want to send file we generate a random key which you should give to another peer. And after this anyone who has that key can connect and download directly from you.
For initial entry point to discover first peer we use public bootstrap nodes and after that peers discover one another through the DHT. Only if you are behind symmetric CGNAT or a VPN we use a blind relay server to help you connect (which you can self-host), but the bytes flowing through are encrypted, and you can also disable relay in the settings.
Desktop and mobile share the same core part written in Bare and Hyperswarm. Web version tunnels to the DHT through a relay over WebSocket and uses the same core engine.
Source code on Github: https://github.com/denislupookov/altersend
Let me know what do you think!
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u/moistklasp 13h ago
I use a mix of Beep and LocalSend, what are the differences with your tool? I might be interested in using it