Bittorrent Sync 1.4 makes sharing folders a breeze

Martin Brinkmann
Aug 26, 2014
Internet
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2

While things have improved significantly in recent time in regards to sharing large files or folders with others, it is still far from what many would call easy to setup.

Lets say you want to share a folder full of high resolution photos of your last summer vacation. Email won't work because the photos are too large. You could upload them to a photo hosting site like Flickr and share them this way, but this would require an account on your part and maybe also for anyone wanting to view the photos if you don't want to make them available publicly.

There are also file hosting services that you can use. You could upload them to Dropbox, SkyDrive or Google Drive provided that you have an account there, and share the url with others this way.

All of these solutions require the creation of an account at the very least, and probably more than one.

Bittorrent Sync has recently been updated to version 1.4 introducing an even simpler option to share folders and large files with others.

bittorrent sync file sharing

Here are the steps involved in the process:

  1. Download Bittorent Sync from the official website and run it afterwards.
  2. Add a folder to the application.
  3. Select the copy option to copy the sharing link, or use email to create an email template in the default mail client automatically that includes it.
  4. Sent the mail to as many recipients as you want.
  5. They follow the link and download the client offered to them that includes the shared folder.

As you can see, there is no requirement to create an account before folders can be shared or downloaded using the application.

It is without doubt one of the simplest most effective options when it comes to making available folders or files to others.

Downside: The one downside here is that the sender's computer needs to be connected to the Internet for the transfers to take place.

The program is configured to prompt the sender of the file whenever a new peer attempts to start the download. This is a security precaution as the links created by the application are protected only by random strings which means that anyone with access to it can start the download as well.

This can be disabled during setup on the other hand. Here you can also change the expiration time of three days and limit downloads as well.

Last but not least, you can change access from being read-only to read and write.

Sync users who have used the previous key-sharing implementation can still use it as it is still available as an alternative option to share folders. A read-only and read/write key is assigned to each folder automatically which you can share with others as well.

Another new feature is the ability to customize the information displayed for each folder. This includes sending and receiving traffic, the size, date added or the number of peers.

Conclusion

Bittorrent Sync 1.4 makes it real simple to share folders of any size with other Internet users. While it is still necessary to provide them with a link, everything after that point is automated for users who download and run the program.

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Software Name
Bittorrent Sync
Operating System
Windows, Mac, Linux
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Comments

  1. fokka said on August 27, 2014 at 3:27 pm
    Reply

    i don’t know, i somehow still don’t see a big place for bttorrent sync for sending files. the only real advantage over other file sharing/cloud services is the unlimited file size.

    having the computer to be turned on seems to be at least a minor downside, plus, downloads will be limited by the upload speed of the “sender”, so if multiple recipients receive the link and start downloading at the same time, it will be a snore-fest, depending on the connection of the sender.

    with eg. dropbox you have to upload your files first completely, but at least then you don’t have to leave your pc running and download speeds for recipients should be much higher.

    maybe i’m overlooking something and i’m sure that there are other scenarios where bt sync makes more sense, i just can’t think of one yet.

    1. Martin Brinkmann said on August 27, 2014 at 3:41 pm
      Reply

      But downloads will pick up soon thanks to others seeding as well. Sure though that downloading from classic file hosting sites is faster usually.

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