Between-Device Sharing Still Sucks | Hackaday
Skip to content
Once upon a time, computing was simple. You had files on a floppy disk. If you wanted to take them to a different computer, you ejected the disk from one machine and put it in another. It wasn’t fast, but it was easy and intuitive. Besides, you probably only had one computer of your own, anyway.
Life has since gotten a lot more complex. You’ve got a desktop, a laptop, a work laptop, your personal and business phones, and a smart watch to boot. You live amongst a swirling maelstrom of terabytes of data. Despite all the technical advances that got you here, it’s still a pain to get a file from one device to another, even when they’re sitting on the same desk. Why?!
This Modern Glitch
So many buttons to share a file… just get it on to the computer!!! Credit: author<br>" data-large-file="https://hackaday.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/Screenshot_20260518_162532_IntentResolver.jpg?w=288" class="size-medium wp-image-1111479" src="https://hackaday.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/Screenshot_20260518_162532_IntentResolver.jpg?w=185" alt="" width="185" height="400" srcset="https://hackaday.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/Screenshot_20260518_162532_IntentResolver.jpg 1080w, https://hackaday.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/Screenshot_20260518_162532_IntentResolver.jpg?resize=115,250 115w, https://hackaday.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/Screenshot_20260518_162532_IntentResolver.jpg?resize=185,400 185w, https://hackaday.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/Screenshot_20260518_162532_IntentResolver.jpg?resize=288,625 288w, https://hackaday.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/Screenshot_20260518_162532_IntentResolver.jpg?resize=709,1536 709w, https://hackaday.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/Screenshot_20260518_162532_IntentResolver.jpg?resize=945,2048 945w" sizes="(max-width: 185px) 100vw, 185px" />So many buttons to share a file… just get it on to the computer!!!<br>Our computers are actually very good at connecting to each other. We have Ethernet devices with auto-negotiation, WiFi and Bluetooth in just about everything, and DHCP for good measure. It’s easy to get devices on the network and online. One might think all this connectivity would make sharing data easy. But we’re not so lucky.
Let’s take a straightforward example. Just getting a JPG off a smartphone requires jumping several hurdles and a little bit of begging to the benevolent tech gods. You can plug your phone in via USB to grab files, assuming you’ve got an Android, but you’ll have to flick through menus multiple times to get it to shift into the right mode to get files off. An iPhone will allow the same but you’ll need an app to help "import" them.
You could alternatively try sending them via Bluetooth, but you’ll have to go through the hassle of pairing, which almost never works first time. You’ll also get glacial transfer speeds and watching the process fail a few times. Alternatively you might see if your phone comes with a proprietary app for transfers, or you could try waiting to sync files to a cloud service or just emailing them to yourself. The latter method will make a mess of your inbox, but at least you get the files across when you need them.
It Was Not Ever Thus
In the Windows 9x days, sharing files in the home was easy. Permissions were simple, but security was also low.<br>" data-large-file="https://hackaday.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/Screenshot-2026-05-18-160852.png?w=638" class="size-medium wp-image-1111478" src="https://hackaday.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/Screenshot-2026-05-18-160852.png?w=400" alt="" width="400" height="301" srcset="https://hackaday.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/Screenshot-2026-05-18-160852.png 638w, https://hackaday.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/Screenshot-2026-05-18-160852.png?resize=250,188 250w, https://hackaday.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/Screenshot-2026-05-18-160852.png?resize=400,301 400w" sizes="(max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px" />In the Windows 9x days, sharing files in the home was easy. Permissions were simple, but security was not up to the standards of today.<br>It wasn’t always like this. Jump back a quarter century, and things looked very different. Windows 9x had a massive install base, with Windows XP just bursting on to the scene. You could still sneakernet stuff around with floppy disks if you wanted, of course. But it was also a cinch to set up simple network shares to access files across machines on a home network. It just worked.
Much the same was true of the Macintosh ecosystem. Back then, smartphones weren’t a thing, and few of us were carrying any sort of device with any real amount of data. Things like digital cameras and MP3 players would soon rise to prominence, but getting files on and off them was a dream—simply plug in, and they’d present as a USB mass storage device. No drivers, no passwords, no bloated apps. Just peace.
Of course, that would all change a few years down the line. Take the Windows world as an example. Network...