Sending Files with Floe Desktop

Open Floe and stay on the Send tab. Add what you want to send, click Send, then share the code or link with the person receiving.

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Add files

There are four ways to stage files, and you can mix them: Everything you add appears in a list under Files. Remove a single entry with the X on its row, or empty the whole list with Clear, beside the Send button. Clear appears only when that tab is holding something, and while a transfer is sending its place belongs to Cancel, so on an empty tab or mid-send there is no Clear to find. It takes only what the tab you are on is holding (the file list on Files, the box on Text) and leaves your settings, the Receive tab, your history and the files themselves alone. It does not ask first. It offers Undo instead, in a bar at the bottom of the window, which puts back exactly what you had staged, whitespace and all. The bar shows for about ten seconds, longer while you point at it or reach it with the keyboard. The offer behind it lasts longer than the bar does, and Ctrl Z takes it once the bar has gone. It stands until you put something new on that same tab, clear something else, or start over. Looking somewhere else does not spend it: switch tabs, open Settings, check History, send from the other tab or cancel a transfer, and the bar simply steps out of the way, then comes back when you return. Ctrl Z works only on the Send tab it came from, and is ignored while the cursor is in a text box, so click out of the box first. Ctrl R starts over, which clears the selection along with everything else on the card. It asks first if a transfer is already moving bytes, if the text box holds a note that has not been sent (the dialog reads “The text you typed has not been sent yet. Starting over will clear it.”), or if you cleared a note that had never been sent and its Undo is still standing, since starting over discards it. Clicking the Floe lockup in the titlebar starts over too, with the same confirmations, but only the shortcut is held back while you are typing. Adding the same path twice does nothing, so dragging a file you already staged is safe. One edge worth knowing: if you add a folder and a file that lives inside it, that file is sent twice, because the folder is walked separately.

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Paste to send

Ctrl V handles two different clipboard contents:

• Files copied in File Explorer are staged by path, so nothing is duplicated on disk no matter how large they are.
• An image, such as a screenshot from Win Shift S, is written to a temporary file named pasted-image-<date>-<time>.png and staged from there. The timestamp keeps repeated pastes apart, and it is also the name the person receiving sees. Floe clears these temporary files the next time it starts.

Paste is ignored while you are typing in a text field, so pasting a room code into the Receive tab still works normally.

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Folders

Folders are sent as folders. Floe walks the folder, sends each file, and the person receiving gets the same structure inside their save folder. There is no zipping step on either side, and no size limit on a direct connection.

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Send a text note

Switch from Files to Text and type or paste into the box. Floe sends the text as a file called message.txt, so the person receiving does not need Floe Desktop: any Floe peer, in a browser or on the command line, receives it as an ordinary file. Press Ctrl Enter in the box to send without reaching for the button.

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Share the code or link

Click Send. Floe registers a room and shows three ways to hand it over. A phone receives in its browser. On iOS, tell them to use Download ZIP rather than saving files one at a time, which behaves inconsistently there. See Receiving Files with the Floe Web App. The room code expires 10 minutes after you click Send. The link keeps working for as long as Floe is still waiting, so for a longer wait, share the link.

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While it sends

The transfer starts by itself as soon as the other side joins. Nothing to confirm. The badge at the top right of the card tells you what is happening: Below it, a progress bar shows the current file, the percentage, the speed, and the estimated time remaining. Cancel stops the transfer at any point. You can minimise the window and the transfer keeps running, because the transfer happens in Floe’s core rather than in the window. Windows is also asked not to sleep while a transfer is connected. Closing the window ends the transfer. When it finishes you get a Windows notification and the card reads Sent 1 item.

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Send from File Explorer

If you turned on Show in right-click menu, right-click any file in File Explorer and choose Send with Floe. On Windows 11 it sits under Show more options. Floe opens with that file already staged, or, if Floe is already running, brings the existing window forward and adds the file to it. This entry is only available in the build from GitHub. See Installation.

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Size limits

Direct connections have no size limit. If the connection has to fall back to the encrypted relay, transfers are capped at 2 GB per session. When Floe can confirm the route is relayed, it blocks an oversized transfer before any data moves, with the error “relay connections are capped at 2 GB”. If the route cannot be determined, Floe lets the transfer start rather than blocking a legitimate one, so in that case a relayed transfer over 2 GB can still fail partway through. Turning on Hide my IP forces every transfer through the relay, so the 2 GB cap always applies while it is on. Floe says so in the error when that is what caused the block. See The 2 GB Relay Limit.

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Keyboard

Ctrl O adds files, Ctrl Enter sends, Ctrl Z undoes a Clear, Ctrl R starts over. The full list is in Keyboard shortcuts.