Blaze Peer to Peer Sharing - Mini Review

Blaze offers a peer to peer file transfer option in your browser that gives you an an easy way to send a file between your own computer and phone or share files with friends that don’t use the same apps as you. Sure you can use an app like fastupload that I talked about the other day, but the big drawback to using a service like that is you still need to upload the file to a third party server. With Blaze you share using a peer to peer connection, no third party server involved. This is similar to how Syncthing works, peer to peer connections with no third party.

What I Like

• All browser based. Nothing to install.
• Peer to peer, so the file you transfer is not uploaded to a third party. It goes straight to the other person.
• Easy to use. No account needed. Just give your computer a nickname, join or create a share room and you can easily start sending files.
• Works great on desktop and mobile browsers. Makes it easy to do the occasional file transfer to and from your mobile and computer.
• Easy to clear your settings and start from scratch if you want.
• It is open source, feel free to take a look at the source code and if you feel so inclined you could even run a version I suppose. There are even Docker images you can use if you like.

What I Dislike

• There is not a lot to dislike about this cloud app. Perhaps the only thing I can find to dislike about this app is that when I shared files they automatically downloaded on the other device. I understand why that is the action that happens but if you are sharing a lot of files to another device but I feel a notice to save the file or perhaps a setting to choose a default might be nice.
• I had trouble with dragging and dropping files to send. It just would not trigger. I had to use the Send File button to properly queue files.

Overall I really like Blaze and I can see myself using it occasionally. Always nice to have apps like this in your toolbox because you never know when you might need it.