FOSSPicks

File sender

ffsend

The Firefox web browser has been taking on a more proactive role in all things privacy and Internet related, and that's definitely a good thing. One of the best features to come out of this phase, and its subsequent Mozilla Manifesto, is Firefox Send. This is a secure way of sending someone a file and has been designed to tempt people away from proprietary services like Dropbox or MEGA and replace them with one that's transparent, encrypted, and operated by someone potentially more trustworthy. Anyone can use Firefox Send by going to https://send.firefox.com/, dropping the file you'd like to send into the browser window, and sharing the resultant URL with the recipient. You can even choose when the link expires, or how many downloads you wish to allow. Without an account, there's a 1GB file size limit. With an account, you can send 2.5GB.

All of this is great, of course, but it's only a web service. What makes it really useful is when you can use it from the command line, and that's exactly what ffsend does. By typing ffsend upload file.zip, file.zip will be uploaded to Mozilla's server and a link generated, which is output to the command line. You then just need to share the URL with whoever you want to download the file. As with the web interface, there are further arguments for setting the number of downloads, generating a QR code for easy URL sharing, and even setting a password. As both this and Mozilla's server software is open source, you can even set an alternative server if you want complete control over the process. It's a brilliant, and more reliable, alternative to "wormhole" on the command line, and a better option if you need to share files from within a script.

Project Website

https://github.com/timvisee/ffsend

ffsend includes lots of additional options for running without interaction within a script.

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