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Send files, whole folders or a typed note from Floe Desktop to one person on any Floe app: a browser, the floe CLI (Floe’s command-line tool) or another Floe Desktop. You stage what to send on the Send tab, click Send, and hand over the code, link or QR code that appears. Needs: Floe Desktop on Windows, open on your PC until the transfer finishes. See Installation.

The short version

Add files on the Send tab and click Send. Floe shows a room code (three words), a share link and a QR code. Give one of them to one person, and keep Floe open: the transfer starts by itself when they join.
1

Add what you want to send

On the Send tab, pick or drop files and folders, or switch to Text and type a note. See Add files and Send a text note.
2

Click Send

The button reads Send 1 item, Send 3 items or Send text, by what you staged.
3

Share the code or link

Give the other person the room code, the share link or the QR code. See Share the code or link.
4

Keep Floe open until it finishes

The transfer starts by itself when they join. See While it sends.

Add files

Stage files in any of these ways, and mix them freely: Everything you add appears in a list under Files. Remove a single entry with the X on its row. Once something is staged, the big drop zone shrinks to a slim Add files row, and Files and Folder become two small icons at its right, named Add files and Add a folder. Adding a path that is already in the list does nothing, so dragging a file you already staged is safe. One edge is 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. Anything you drop, paste or send with Send with Floe takes you to Send > Files, from Receive, History or Settings too. Floe ignores anything new you drop, paste or send to it from File Explorer while a send or a receive is running. It does the same while one of these dialogs is open: Start over?, Close Floe? or Reset all settings?. Answer the dialog, then add the files again. During a send or a receive the drop zone and its buttons are hidden, and what you staged before stays staged.

Paste to send

Ctrl V handles two different clipboard contents:
  • Files and folders copied in File Explorer are staged by path, so nothing is duplicated on disk no matter how large they are. When the clipboard holds both files and an image, the files win.
  • An image, such as a screenshot from Win Shift S, is written to a temporary file named pasted-image-<date>-<time>-<ms>.png, for example pasted-image-20260820-143512-407.png, and staged from there. The timestamp runs down to the millisecond, so two pastes in the same second stay apart. It is also the name the person receiving sees. Floe clears these temporary files the next time it starts.
An image pastes only when the program that copied it put it on the clipboard in PNG form. Otherwise Ctrl V does nothing and shows no message. Paste is ignored while you are typing in a text field, so pasting a code into the Receive tab still works normally.

Folders

Folders are sent as folders. Floe walks the folder and sends each file with its path inside it. An empty folder holds nothing to send, so it is left out. A Floe Desktop or floe CLI receiver rebuilds the same structure inside its save folder, with no zipping step on either side. A browser receiver lists the files one by one, and only its Download ZIP keeps the folders. See Receiving files. Floe walks your selection when you click Send, before any code is made, and stops there when it cannot send it:
  • A selection that holds no file at all, only empty folders: Error: The folders you chose have no files to send.
  • A link or a junction inside a folder that points to another folder: Error: cannot walk <folder>: cannot send <path>: it is a link to a folder, which Floe does not follow.
  • A link inside a folder that points nowhere: Error: cannot walk <folder>: cannot read <path>: <reason>.
  • A file or folder you added that is gone, for example one you moved or deleted after you added it: Error: cannot read <path>: <reason>.
  • A pipe, a socket or a device you added directly: Error: cannot send <path>: it is a pipe, a socket or a device, not a file. Inside a folder, such an entry is left out.
A link to a file inside a folder is sent as that file, at the file’s own size. A folder you add directly that is itself a link is walked like any folder.

Clear and Undo

Clear, beside the Send button, empties what the tab you are on is holding: the file list on Files, or the box on Text. It appears only while that tab is holding something. During a send, Cancel takes its place. Clear leaves your settings, the Receive tab, your history and the files themselves alone. Clear 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 10 seconds, longer while you point at it or reach it with the keyboard. The undo outlasts its bar, 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 undo is still there when you come back. Ctrl Z works only on the Send tab the clear came from, and is ignored while the cursor is in a text box, so click out of the box first. Floe holds one undo at a time. Clearing on one tab while an undo from the other is still standing replaces it, so if you cleared a note, undo it before you clear a file list.

Start over

Ctrl R starts over. It cancels a send or a receive by code, closes Settings or History, and puts the Send and Receive tabs back the way they were when Floe opened. You land on whichever of the two you used last. Your settings, your save folder and your history are kept. So are an open request link and a drop arriving through it. Clicking Floe at the left of the title bar does the same. It asks first only when something would be lost, and the dialog says what:
  • A transfer that is already moving data: “Starting over cancels the transfer”.
  • A note in the text box that has not been sent: “Starting over clears your unsent text”.
  • A note you cleared that had never been sent and whose Undo is still standing: “Starting over discards the text you can still undo”.
A send that is still connecting or waiting for the other person gets the same prompt when it carries a note that has not been delivered. Keep going keeps both the note and the send. With nothing to lose, Start over stays a one-click way out of a stuck connection. A note counts as sent only while the box still holds exactly what went out. So typing a new note after a send asks again, and so does a note you typed and then left for a file send. With a request link open, the dialog adds “Your request link stays open”. Its buttons are Keep going and Start over. The shortcut does nothing while you are typing in a field. Neither the shortcut nor the click does anything behind the Close Floe? and Reset all settings? dialogs.

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, the app on the other end, receives it as an ordinary file, in a browser or on the command line. Press Ctrl Enter in the box to send without reaching for the button. Click Send. Floe registers a room, the meeting point on Floe’s signaling server, and shows three ways to hand it over.
The Floe Desktop Send card with a room open: Active, 3 items, Cancel, the room code, the share link, a QR code, and Waiting for the receiver.

The share panel, with the QR code shown, from Floe Desktop 1.0.x. A link from 1.1 and later also holds its link key after the #.

The small copy icon beside the code, and the one beside the link, put it on your clipboard. Each turns into a green check for 1.5 seconds. In Floe Desktop 1.1 and later, a share link looks like https://floe.one/?s=<8 characters>#k=<link key>&room=<room id>. In Floe Desktop 1.0.x it has no link key: https://floe.one/?s=<8 characters>#room=<room id>. The s value carries no information: it only makes each link a new page, so a phone that already has Floe open joins the new room. Share, beside Show QR, opens the Windows share window with the share link. If sharing fails, Floe copies the link instead. 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. The code and the link are all that protect the transfer. Whoever enters the code or opens the link first gets the files, and Floe Desktop does not ask you to approve them, so share them only over a channel you trust. See Known limitations. In Floe Desktop 1.1 and later, the link key lets a receiver who opens the link check your side. A room code carries none, so whoever joins with the code has no check. Send only detects: it stops on a proof that is wrong and goes on when no proof comes, because a receiver by code has none to give. So a server that plays such a receiver gets the whole file, and Floe still says the files were sent. Floe Desktop has no switch to wait for the proof. See What the link key checks. A room takes exactly one receiver, so send again for a second person. The room code works for 10 minutes at most. The link keeps working while Floe waits, so for a longer wait, share the link. See How a transfer works and A room holds exactly two people. The wait has no timer, but it needs your PC awake and connected. Floe does not keep the PC awake while it only waits. If the PC sleeps, loses its network or the server restarts, the code and the link stop working, and the status line reads Error: Can't reach the server. Click Send again for new ones. If the server could not register a code, the panel shows the link and the QR code without one. The panel is there only while Floe waits: it goes away as soon as the other person joins. To have someone send files to you instead, make a request link. Floe runs one send or one receive by code at a time, so wait for the current one to finish before starting the next. There is no queue. A request link runs alongside either.

What the other person sees

What happens on their side depends on the app they use: If they answer no at the floe receive prompt, your status line reads Error: They declined. Nothing was sent. If their floe is 1.11.0 or earlier, a no reads Error: The receiver left or declined instead. If they press Ctrl C at the prompt, it reads Error: They stopped the transfer.

While it sends

The transfer starts by itself as soon as the other side joins. There is nothing to confirm.
Keep Floe open until the transfer finishes. Closing it stops the send, and a transfer that stops cannot be resumed, only sent again.
The status line under the card follows the send: Setting up... after you click Send, Waiting for the receiver once the code and link show, then Sending... when the other person joins, and then a progress bar. The progress bar shows the current file, the percentage, the speed, and the estimated time remaining. While a send runs, the file list folds into one row, such as 3 items, which opens a read-only list. The badge at the top right of the card tells you what is happening: The dot beside the word is green, or amber when the transfer goes through the relay or Hide my IP address (Hide my IP) is on. An amber READY or AUTO-ACCEPT means that setting is on, so the next transfer will be relayed and capped at 2 GB. Those are the only states that explain themselves when you point at them: “Hide my IP limits transfers to 2 GB”. Cancel stops the transfer at any point: the status line reads Canceled, and the code and link you shared stop working. A send that fails shows a red line starting with Error: and drops its code and link the same way, so click Send again for new ones. You can minimize the window, and the transfer keeps running. Once the other person has joined, Floe asks Windows not to sleep until the transfer ends. The screen can still turn off. Closing a laptop lid or choosing Sleep yourself still wins, and ends the transfer: after waking, the status line usually reads Error: The connection dropped before the transfer finished. Send the files that did not arrive again. See A device that sleeps ends the transfer. While no send, receive or request-link drop is running, the line under the card reads “End-to-end encrypted, never stored on a server”. While a send waits or runs, it reads “Keep this window open until it’s done”, and closing the window then asks first, in a dialog titled Close Floe? that reads “Closing now stops the transfer and they get nothing”. Keep open (or Esc) goes back, and Close stops the transfer and quits Floe. The dialog covers the title bar’s close button, Alt F4 and the taskbar’s Close, and it goes away by itself if the transfer ends first.

When it finishes

The card reads Sent 1 item, or Sent 4 items for four. It counts what you staged, not what crossed the wire, so a single folder holding 50 files reads Sent 1 item. A text note is one item too, since it travels as a single message.txt. The check mark beside it is green when the other side confirms that every file arrived exactly as sent, checked by its SHA-256 fingerprint, and gray otherwise. See File checks. What you staged stays staged, files and note alike, so Send again makes a new code for the next person with one click. With notifications on, Floe also shows a Windows notification when a transfer finishes or fails while it is in the background. See Notifications.

Send from File Explorer

With Show in right-click menu on, you can send straight from File Explorer. It is on by default in the installer build from GitHub. The portable build leaves it off until you turn it on.
1

Select the files

In File Explorer, select one file or several, any number of them. The entry is for files, not folders.
2

Right-click them

On Windows 11, choose Show more options to see the full menu.
3

Choose Send with Floe

Floe opens with those files staged. If Floe is already running, its window comes forward and the files are added to it.
Only one Floe runs at a time. Windows launches Floe once per selected file, and every one of them lands in the same window. The Microsoft Store build does not have this entry. See Installation.

Size limits

Floe sets no size limit on a direct connection, though a browser on the receiving end can only hold so much. A send that goes through the relay is capped at 2 GB. When Floe confirms the route is relayed and you staged more than that, it stops before any file data moves:
Status line
With Hide my IP address on, every send is relayed, so the cap always applies, and the line ends with . Turn off Hide my IP to send larger files. See File size limits for what decides the route and what counts toward the cap, and Known limitations for what a browser receiver can hold.

Keyboard

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

If something goes wrong

Last modified on November 5, 2026