Best File Transfer Protocols for Windows and Mac
Introduction
If you’re a new user of File Manager, and you’re wondering what the point of it is (and why File Manager exists), this is your guide to the next best thing. Also, this guide will be helpful if you’re trying to get a file transferred between two different computers or operating systems.
The first part will discuss the underlying technology, and the second part will focus on the best File Transfer Protocols for Windows and Mac.
Just like all other things in life, File Transfer Protocol (FTP) has an open API and can be used to implement custom protocols.
(Note that these are not hacks; they are designed to work with File Manager.)
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The Best File Transfer Protocols for Windows
The recent trend of file sharing is getting a lot of attention. In fact, I think it’s going to explode over the next few years because people are sharing much more than just files. More and more people are also sharing photos, music, games and other kinds of content.
So what’s the best way to get your files from one computer to another without having to deal with complicated file exchanging protocols? The answer? Simple: just use FileZilla (which is available for both Windows and Mac). The third-party app was designed specifically for file transfers between computers. It’s fast, reliable, robust and offers pretty much everything you would want from a standard FTP client. It even supports Windows 8!
In this post, I’m going to focus on FileZilla for Windows because it works in a very straightforward way and has a great user interface. But there are many other options out there — we are constantly finding new ways that work better. Here’s how you can use FileZilla on Windows:
1.) Open FileZilla; choose “Connect to server…”; then choose your server (or set up automatic reconnections).
2.) Once you connect, you should see the following window:
3.) Now you can browse your file(s) or select them in the left pane (available in both languages).
4.) And that’s it! A list of all your files will appear at the bottom of the window (depending on install language).
5.) You can edit or download any one or all of them using this menu:
6.) To save changes click Save Changes.
7.) To exit, click Quit.
There are many other features available in FileZilla — some more useful than others (for example EasyFTP lets you manage multiple connections at once), but for basic file transfers it does all you need. Keep in mind that this is only one client so please try several before making a decision; there may be a better one out there but I haven’t seen anything yet.
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The Best File Transfer Protocols for Mac
Most of the time, you will probably use a file browser to transfer files from one computer to another. But why not use another protocol? There are plenty of them, and a few of them are better than others. Let’s take a look at a few good ones for Mac:
Kopf!
Kopf is (currently) the best file transfer protocol designed specifically for Macs and it is used by some really great apps in the field (including FileZilla). It does not require any special setup or configuration — there is no app that “needs” to be installed on the other end to use it — and it also operates over HTTP and FTP protocols as well as SFTP. You can even create your own SFTP server with Kopf! Kopf also supports Apple File Sharing which means that you can share files with other people directly through your machine instead of just sending them through an Internet connection.
If you need more information, I recommend reading the following posts:
- A Comparison between Google Drive (Google) & Kopf on Mac OSX
- How To Use Kopf For Mac File Sharing (Part 1)
- How To Use Kopf For Mac File Sharing (Part 2)
- How To Use Kopf For Mac File Sharing (Part 3)
- A List Of Apps That Support Kopf On Mac OSX (PDF 61kb)
Conclusion
We’ve all been there: you’re having dinner with someone, and their laptop is running Windows. You can’t find the file that you need, and the only thing that comes to mind is a quick search in your browser. You know you should have your file manager on hand, because it could save you hours on the long search route. So, how do we go about finding our files? Well, we could just search for them — but this takes time. A quick Google search will return hundreds of results, and each one looks better than the next. But what if there was a better way?
When we say “file transfer protocol” we are referring to an abstract standard (the same way Internet DNS uses an abstract standard for addressing names). The most widely-used one is W3C’s File Transfer Protocol (FTP). It starts with a domain name (e.g., ftp://win32.example), but it also allows us to specify the type of file we want to transfer: binary-text (binary file), text (text file), image (image file), or audio/video (audio/video files). Other protocols may use different variations of this basic idea, but they all serve essentially the same purpose: transfer data between two computers over a network — usually a local area network, or LAN.
If you are familiar with FTP and HTTP protocols (which are based on TCP/IP) then you already know what’s at stake here: FTP is part of the World Wide Web; HTTP is used by websites like Facebook and Google for online ads or even email messages; and FTP is based off TCP/IP because almost all local area networks use TCP/IP as their basic transport protocol.