Portal is a quick and easy command-line file transfer utility from any computer to another 🌌 ✨
MIT License
On macOS/Linux, if you are using Homebrew
brew install portal
On Windows, if you are using Scoop
scoop install portal
On Windows, if you are using WinGet
winget install SpatiumPortae.portal
On Arch Linux (AUR)
yay -S portal-bin
On any platform, you can get the latest release manually, or simply run
curl -sL portal.spatiumportae.com | bash
or
wget -qO - portal.spatiumportae.com | bash
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.
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.
portal
provides:
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
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-s...
42-relative-parsec-supernova 42-relative-parsec-scatter 42-relative-parsec-solar 42-relative-parsec-spin 42-relative-parsec-static
42-relative-parsec-sigma 42-relative-parsec-solid 42-relative-parsec-star 42-relative-parsec-storm 42-relative-parsec-system
boom. supernova.
portal receive 42-relative-parsec-supernova
Receiver
-y/--yes
: overwrite existing files without [Y/n]
promptsRelay
-p/--port
: port to host the relay server onSender
and Receiver
-r/--relay
: address of the relay server (:8080
, myrelay.io:1234
, ...)-s/--tui-style
: the style of the tui (rich
| raw
)Sender
, Receiver
and Relay
-h/--help
: output help messages for any command-v/--verbose
: log debug info to fileportal
places its configuration file in $HOME/.config/portal/config.yml
.
As evident by the file extension, the config is a simple YAML file with descriptive field names.
# The URL of the relay server.
relay: portal.spatiumportae.com
# Log debug output to file.
verbose: false
# Prompt for overwriting duplicates when receiving files.
prompt_overwrite_files: true
# The port used when serving the relay using "portal serve".
relay_serve_port: 8080
# The style of the TUI.
tui_style: rich
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 .
...
{
"level": "info",
"ts": "2023-02-28T02:57:45.310134+01:00",
"caller": "rendezvous/server.go:77",
"msg": "serving rendezvous server",
"version": "v1.2.1",
"address": ":1337"
}
The connection between the sender and the server is negotiated using a intermediary server (relay). The relay server is used to negotiate a secure encrypted channel while never seeing the contents of files nor the temporary password.
The communication works as follows:
sender
connects to relay
relay
allocates a numerical ID to the sender and sends it to the sender
sender
generates and outputs the password (starting with the ID) to the terminal, hashes the password and sends it to the relay
receiver
hashes the password (which has been communicated over some secure channel) and sends it to the relay
sender
and the receiver
have sent the hashed password to the relay
, the cryptographic exchange startsrelay
, well, relays messages from the sender
to the receiver
and vice-versasender
and receiver
is encrypted, and the relay
cannot see their contentssender
and receiver
are in the same local network or can be reached directly by IP in some other way
sender
and receiver
will happily send the files to each other directly. The relay
will close down for this connection.sender
and receiver
are not on the same local network, or cannot reach each other directly. The transfer will go through the relay
, which will continue to relay encrypted messages until the file transfer is completedThe Makefile
has everything you need.
To build a binary containing all commands, run:
PORTAL_VERSION=v1.x.x make build
It's important to include PORTAL_VERSION
, which is a semantic version string. This is needed
in order to validate senders and receivers against the relay, so transfers are disallowed
when on different major versions, for instance.
a big thank you to magic-wormhole for greatly inspiring the concept of Portal.
nhooyr/websocket, shollz/pake, charmbracelet/bubbles, charmbracelet/bubbletea, charmbracelet/lipgloss, muesli/reflow, klauspost/pgzip and many, many more.
A special thanks to our sponsors DigitalOcean. The public relay available for everyone to use is...