There are a lot of cloud sharing services, but most of them either have pretty strict limits on file size or require you create an account and buy storage space. The free filesharing services used to transfer larger files, while great in a browser, have typically lacked desktop clients. Either chopping a file up into multiple parts to share via an app or opening your browser to upload a file would both break your workflow.
Drip, a menubar app to accompany SendSpace, is trying to piece your workflow back together. Giving you access to SendSpace right in the menubar, Drip allows you to share large files seamlessly. But can Drip make a splash or will it get lost in the sea of cloud sharing apps?
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Dropping Your Files to SendSpace
If you have an account with SendSpace, you can login via the application preferences. With a free account you can manage your files on the SendSpace website, and a pro account gives you the ability to upload really big files. Even without an account, though, you can use Drip to upload and manage files through the app.
The Drip drag and drop window
Drip is a menubar app, and to start using it, just drag a file onto the Drip icon. It will begin uploading the file to SendSpace, and you can follow the upload progress in the Drip window. Dragging multiple files will create a queue; each file will be uploaded separately, so you don’t have to worry about Drip zipping your files together.
If you want to upload an entire folder, though, Drip will give you a nice little zip archive. Just drag the folder contents onto the Drip icon, and the app will automatically upload all the interior files as a zip archive, named the same thing as the folder.
Drip creates an upload queue when you drag multiple files into the window.
I was worried that once the Drip window filled up with files, my previous uploads would fall off the list, and I wouldn’t have access to them. Fortunately, the window is scrollable, and I could get to all of my past files no problem.
To remove a file from the upload list, just click the gear next to the filename. Click “Remove from list,” and it will disappear. Likewise, if you want to delete the upload from SendSpace altogether, click “Delete upload.” You can also clear the entire upload list with one click in the application preferences.
There are a few things you can do with your file by clicking the gear icon.
Getting to the file’s SendSpace URL isn’t so easy, though. While there really should be a “Copy file URL” in the gear dropdown, that option just isn’t available. The closest thing is “Send via email.” Once the email window opens, you can then copy the URL from the email and past it wherever you’d like. Sure this isn’t exactly walking to school in the snow uphill both ways, but there are easier ways to get it done. If you’re uploading a file to share via social media or so you can embed a link in a webpage, having to open a new email just to discard it all to get your URL seems like a couple of steps too many.
Drip’s Preferences
It’s a pretty straightforward little app that performs one action, but there are a few options you can toggle on and off. If you’d like to know when an upload is finished, you can get a Growl notification, have Drip play a sound, or both. Drip will also launch on startup if you like, convenient for an easy go-to app like this.
There are a few things to adjust in the preferences.
Drip will also upload screenshots automatically, via an easy keyboard shortcut. The default shortcut is Command+Option+Up Arrow, and you’ll have a new screenshot on it’s way to SendSpace, bypassing your default screenshot folder. However, this shortcut is editable in the application preferences, and you can make it pretty much whatever you’d like.
Conclusion
Drip is a great way to share files from your desktop. SendSpace is especially useful for files you’re only going to need to access once or twice or large files that go beyond the limits of other services. I’ve seen my Dropbox fill up with files I needed to move to another machine or share with a collaborator but that were so big they blew through the 25MB limits of some services. These files cluttered my Dropbox though I only needed to access them once; I just didn’t get around to removing them in a timely manner.
Drip paired with SendSpace saves me that trouble. I have the easy access of a drag and drop menubar app with Drip, without necessarily creating an account anywhere, and SendSpace lets me send really big files. Something of a bonus, if you’re only looking to have your files available temporarily, is that SendSpace will delete your file thirty days after it was last accessed. You don’t have to worry about your files sitting on the internet forever, because they’ll eventually expire.
Drip is simple, well-designed, and fulfills it’s one function nicely. There aren’t a lot of features here because there doesn’t have to be. Drip is intuitive and makes using SendSpace dead easy, right on your desktop.