In the Software catalog I was looking to see what some of the promoted apps were about, and I happened to look at RiftShare. I have previously posted about all the trouble I had with Samba, and this app is a cross-platform file sharing tool that seems to work very well. All sharing computers have to have this app (or a compatible one) installed. When you want to SEND a file or a folder you are given a password. You separately communicate that password to the recipient. They open up RiftShare (or their compatible app), click on RECEIVE, type in the password, and click on DOWNLOAD, and the file goes immediately into their Download folder. The transfer doesn’t go through any third party it’s just sent from your computer to their computer. I’ve tried it on three of my linux computers and it works, and it’s easy. I think this is going to be my “go-to” tool for file sharing.
What advantage does it have over plain old ssh / sftp /scp ?
Just curious… I can see the value if you want to share to other people (BTW - I don’t see how it can work without some “third party” involvement, across the public cloud, it will need some “middle man”, maybe not any of the traffic, but it must need something like that to “broker” the transaction)…
e.g. Fred’s in London, Dick’s in Paris… different ISP’s, etc… Surely some third party must host some kinda “cipher” or whatever, like a torrent seed file, to allow the transaction across the public cloud.
Now - if this is for sharing between users on the same LAN / WiFi network, surely SSH / SFTP / SCP would be a better choice, with a vast choice of clients, e.g. CyberDuck on Windows and Mac, FileZilla or something on Linux (note - I’m a CLI junkie, and I only ever use “scp” and “rsync” from CLI). If you’re going to have to use passwords for EVERY transaction? Unless that password thing is a one time sync, and thereafter, the same file shared between different computers?
I might check it out anyway - not that I need it - perfectly happy with Resilio Sync - and - my FreeNAS (SMB and NFS [NFS kicks SMB’s arse, always has done]).
edit : interesting… Uses wormhole, I remember trying out wormhole quite some few years ago… these seems to make it simpler… and the passphrase to sync uses keywords, and looks and sounds similar to how Brave syncs across different computers, even when they’re not on the same LAN…
@daniel.m.tripp – Thank you for your insight and comments. I’m not competent to comment on the underlying technology, or on the alternative methods you mentioned. I’m still not completely familiar with RiftShare usage either. Re: the passwords, I think each file or folder gets a password that can only be used to access that particular item. The item can be downloaded (at least once) by anyone who has that password, and has a compatible sharing app. I don’t know how LONG that lasts, and I don’t yet know if or how one can terminate the availability of the shared item. Maybe the password can only be used once by a certain IP address? Maybe you can delete the password. I hope to learn more about it soon. Even if this is just “file sharing for dummies”, I think It’s going to work for me. 
I may have used the wrong term with “file sharing” – I don’t mean two people editing the same file from different computers. Maybe I should have said “file sending”?
UPDATE – It appears that each “send” password can only be used once – whoever uses it to receive the file or folder first gets it but the next person(s) will not. Even the first person can only download the item one time. So I think you have to do a separate SEND to each recipient and give them each a different password. That makes sense in terms of security. Just found some instructions at https://riftshare.app but they’re pretty minimal.