portal

Portal 🌌 ✨ is a quick and easy command-line file transfer utility from any computer to another. Transfers are fully encrypted, and made peer-to-peer if possible, with a fallback to a relay server if not.

How it works

To send files:

portal send file1 file2 folder1 folder2 ...

The application will output a temporary password on the format 1-inertia-elliptical-celestial.
The sender will communicate this password to the receiver over some secure channel.

To receive those files:

portal receive 1-intertia-elliptical-celestial

The two clients will establish a connection through a relay server. The file transfer will then commence with a direct or relayed connection, depending on what's possible.

What it looks like ✨

See the featured image!
The sender (top) sends a folder and three files to the receiver (bottom).

In this case, as you can see in the event log, the transfer is made using direct transfer. That means that the files are sent directly from one client to the other, no middlemen involved.

As it happens, these computers are in the same local network, and portal recognizes this.

Features

portal provides:

- End-to-end encryption using [PAKE2](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Password-authenticatedkeyagreement)
- Direct transfer of files if possible (e.g. sender and receiver are in the same local network)
- Fallback to relay server if sender and receiver cannot connect directly
- Parallel gzip compression of files for faster and more efficient transfers
- Hosting your own relay (we'd appreciate it if you plan to send a lot of data!)
- Configurability and shell completions
- A shiny UI ⭐✨ to gaze your eyes upon while you wait for your files

Completions

portal provides extensive TAB completions for the following shells:

- bash
- zsh
- fish
- powershell

To see installation instructions for your shell and platform, run:

portal completion [bash|zsh|fish|powershell] --help

Tip!

You probably didn't quite catch the password Bob was screaming across the room.

You can use TAB completions to auto-complete passwords on the receiving end.

Press TAB when entering parts of your password... portal receive 42-relative-parsec-s...

...and portal will suggest the possible words portal receive 42-relative-parsec-supernova

Hosting your own relay

The portal binary comes with a built-in relay server.

Spinning up your own relay is as easy as... portal serve --port 1337

The server log output is JSON. Super-recommended to run it through jq! portal serve --port 1337 2>&1 | jq .