[skrowl]

https://files.google.com/ is a standard and it works on the vast majority of phone sold this year, by every manufacturer except Apple. Checks all 3 of peer-to-peer, secure, no MiTM network blockage. It's only 11MB.

Many popular file manager apps on android have peer-to-peer xfers as well, via WiFi direct, etc.

EDIT - As people are pointing out this isn't universal because it doesn't work on Apple devices or desktops / laptops, but it's as close as I can think of currently.

[lucideer]

There are numerous problems with this suggestion.

- "is a standard"? What does this mean? Google Files is not a standard of any kind.

- others have mentioned that this is very far from universal. Whatever about Apple devices, you're also discounting all non-mobile devices. Transferring files easily from computer to phone is probably the most common use-case. Yes, you can use Google Drive for that, but that's neither p2p nor seamless.

- the above commenter mentioned wanting a "secure" solution. That's a bit of a subjective term, but I would guess, at least on HN, the typical one would be e2e encrypted, and private. Google Files is neither of these things.

- the p2p function is severely limited in that it requires both a Google account, and location services to be enabled. Neither of which are necessary to initiate a p2p file transfer.

(as another commenter has mentioned), if we're just looking for "the closest thing", I would suggest https://send.firefox.com/ It isn't p2p, but it is secure and universal, so it ticks a lot more boxes overall.

[ahmedfromtunis]

Almost. People need to install the app to use its transfer functionality, and it does not work with computers. We're still far from the universal, no-install solution that should've existed for so many years now.

[iforgotpassword]

Well, no install basically means every OS vendor needs to ship a proper and compatible implementation (hah yes that'll surely happen) or you basically need something web based which means it needs an internet connection for bootstrapping.

[thedanbob]

> except Apple

I wouldn't exactly call that universal...

[skrowl]

Yep, Apple's market share is around 11%, so only 89%(ish) of smartphones. Not 100%, and doesn't include desktops / laptops / etc.

Still, about 8x better than AirDrop!

[wlesieutre]

It doesn't matter to me how many Android users there are globally when we're talking about short range file transfers. I'm not bluetoothing files to somebody in India.

The US's market share split is more like 55% Android and 45% iOS, so anything that doesn't support both platforms is going to fail half the time here.

[untog]

Anything that excludes 11% of the market isn't universal at all though, which was the OP's original request.

[lostgame]

Especially when that 11% is a particularly vocal and active part of the market.

[lostgame]

The situation isn't being helped by another proprietary solution that won't be cross-platform. (I'm an iOS dev, and I don't see integration of this possible without using private API's, and this would also fall under the 'Duplicate existing service' issue.)

[briandear]

It’s just as “standard” as AirDrop on iOS/MacOS which means it isn’t a standard at all.

[rconti]

What's the standard this implements?