What’s The Easiest Way To Share Large Files With Friends?

When you want to to share music, movies, photos or other files online, you’ve got countless options. We’ve examined most, and for our money, one tool emerges on top of the heap for its ease of use, wide support, and all-around excellence.

Sharing files publicly has always been a subject of hot debate, but put aside any legal concerns for the moment and consider: What if you want to just share some home videos or music privately with a few friends rather than the internet at large? What’s the easiest way to share large files?

The Answer: Opera Unite

For this writer and tech enthusiast’s money, the easiest and best way to share large files of any kind with your friends and family is to simply install Opera Unite, walk through a couple of quick configuration screens, and then send them the URL and password to access your content from any browser.

Plenty of websites let you send large files around, usually by uploading a file and then sending a link to the content, and BitTorrent is also great for sharing large files, but the problem with both of those is that you’re unnecessarily putting your content out there online for others, and wasting bandwidth by sending it to third parties. (You could setup private torrents, but those still require an open tracking server, which aren’t always reliable.) Opera Unite sets up a fast, direct connection to share your files, it’s extremely easy to use, and best of all, it’s free!

Setting Up Unite is Easy

component of the Opera browserdownload and install the latest version of Opera

Note: You don’t have to switch to the Opera browser to use Unite, so if you’re a Firefox or Chrome loyalist, you can still choose to use Opera just for your file sharing needs.

Once you’ve done set it up, you can right-click on Opera Unite Home and access the Properties, or you can select the Fire Sharing module and click the Start button to open up a short configuration wizard to help you share your files.

The Technical Bits

Internally, Opera Unite is nothing more than a web server that runs inside of your web browser, and uses the standard HTTP protocol so your friends and family can access your shared content from any browser. Your free Unite account gives you access to Opera’s dynamic DNS service, which means you can share your content with an easy-to-remember, unique URL that you can send to anybody. Unite automatically hooks into your router using uPnP to dynamically open port 8840, but it can also use a Unite proxy server when you’re behind a more restrictive firewall — though it will obviously be slower.

Everything is password protected, so even if you’ve setup file sharing and the URL is public, it doesn’t mean that people will be able to see what you are sharing — only those that you’ve given both the public URL and the password to can access your files. You’ll probably want to change the default passwords, though.

Share Files With Your Friends

Your unique Opera Unite URL will always be set to the [devicename] .[username] .operaunite.com address format, so you can actually have multiple devices setup on your network and easily share files with each one. If you would prefer to get a little more geeky, you can actually setup your own domain name for Opera Unite, but that’s probably overkill for just sharing some files with friends.[imgclear]

Accessing the Shared Content

What makes this really great for sharing with your less tech-savvy friends is that they don’t have to install any applications, or even install Opera — all of the content should work from any browser.[imgclear]

Taking Unite Beyond Simple File-Sharing

enables many downloadable modules

The fun doesn’t stop with media serving—there are modules for a simple HTML web server, photo sharing, whiteboards, chatrooms, file sync, and more.

What about you? What’s your best method of sharing large files with your friends and family? Have you used Opera Unite? Share your thoughts in the comments.

The How-To Geek loves the simplicity of Opera Unite for sharing files. His geeky articles can be found daily here on Lifehacker, How-To Geek and Twitter.