There used to be this fantastic app called Papaya where you started a webserver to share files with friends. You just draged folders and files to it and started the server and it gave you a link, you could also put password on it.
I know these days you have cloud services, but then you need yo upload first, and then share. Ive had instances where icloud takes a long time to generate a share, speed goes up and down etc.
There doesnt seem to be any thing like this app anymore? It was just so much easier and faster, no need to upload, no need to remove the files from the cloud etc.
I’m sure even Papaya uploaded your files, maybe it did it in the background, but a web server requires that to happen. I use iCloud to share files and it works pretty well.
The other option is to share via email which offers you the opportunity to upload the file to iCloud then the person on the other end can download when they’re ready.
I’ve been using Blip the past couple months. Works as advertised, no issues on anything from lots of tiny files to several hundred gigs of video files.
So this papaya software did not upload anything it created a webserver with a link. Just drag the files and share the link. The person who went to the link would end up on a website hosted on you computer with download links.
And the whole point is to not have to upload. Like if you want to send Apple Proraw video for a friend to help edit? You would have to wait for the upload and then share, upgrade your storage space and the delete from you cloud share.
All other options that comes close to it uses the app on both server/client side.
Isnt it strange that it doesnt exist anything like this anymore? Has Apple sandboxed away the possibility to launch a small webserver?
Im also curious about how it did work. Is there any network specialists here that can explain how it did work and if its not possible anymore to open up a port and host a website with download links?
Setup the built in Apache web server which already exists on your Mac
open port 80 and/or 443 on your mac’s firewall
Set up NAT on your local LAN Firewall which connects your home to the internet to forward port 80/443 to your Mac
Grab your Internet facing IP Address on your local router/firewall
Setup a username and password on Apache to allow access to your local machine
Host the file you wish to share on your local web server
send an IP Address link, username, and password to your other person to download the file
Hope your Router/firewall IP Address doesn’t change.
I suspect what Papaya added to the mix, is that it made you install some software locally which communicated your router/firewall IP address to a internet based web server in case your IP Address changed, and the link you sent to the other person was for the internet based web server which redirected them to your local IP Address. Either that or it used something like DYNDNS
This syncs files & folders in more than one location, so it seems like Dropbox/iCloud, but without it being uploaded to a central server. It just matches files in two (or more) locations, and updates them peer to peer.
Super easy to set up, just create the share and send others the link. They add it in SyncThing, and their folder will update to match yours. Has lots of controls like passwords, versioning, one way sync etc, so you can set it up as you’d like. E2E encrypted.
I’ve used Resilio Sync for many years now. It’s peer to peer, encrypted, and I’ve got a server Mac that runs 24/7 which makes the operation solid. Friends get a link, install the Resilio Sync software, and then it shares folders just like Dropbox would, but with no cost.
For one-way sharing (file hosting), I’ve got a hosted website and just put files on that for downloading via http. In this case it is security through obscurity, but nothing personal is shared that way.
Or as Geoff mentioned, something like a free account on Dropbox gives you a few GB (2GB on the free plan from memory) which would also work depending on how big the files you are wanting to send!
So i spent half a day with Chatgpt and managed to use an old domain i had to put up a cloudflare tunnel, connected to homebrew app Caddy. Works perfectly it creates a webserver and puts the files from the folder in that website.
Papaya 1.3.2 - Download for Mac Free