OurStick

A USB stick in a link.

Choose folders in the OurStick app and send the link it gives you. The other person opens it in OurStick and gets the files.

Straight from your computer to theirs, encrypted on your device. Nothing is copied first: no accounts, no uploads to a cloud, no size limits. When you add or change files, they get them too.

Not yet: Macs with an Intel processor, and phones.

The Mac app is signed and notarized by Apple. The Windows installer is not signed yet: your browser may warn that the file is not commonly downloaded (choose Keep), and its first start may say “Windows protected your PC”: choose More info, then Run anyway.

How it works

1. 1. Choose what to send

   Open OurStick and press Send. Choose folders or files, or drag them onto the window. Nothing is copied: OurStick sends them from where they are, so leave them there. Give it a name, as others will see it, and press Get the link.

2. 2. Send the link

   Press Copy link and send it any way you like: email, a chat app, a text message. A link looks like this:

   https://ourstick.com/s/#ag7gk2…4qa.crkp9x…m4t

   • where OurStick finds your computer
   • the key that unlocks the files

   Both come after “#”, which browsers never send to any website: not even this one sees whose files they are.

3. 3. They get it

   They copy the link, open OurStick and press Receive: OurStick finds the link by itself. They see what it holds and where it goes (their Downloads folder, or one they choose), take only some of it if they like, and press Download. The files come straight from your computer to theirs, and what you add or change later comes to them too.

Nothing is copied

Your files stay where they are. OurStick sends them from their own folders, so a folder of any size, or a whole external disk, is sent without a second copy and without waiting.

Keep them there. Change a file, and they get the change. Move or delete one, and it stops coming; what they have stays with them.

Add more at any time, to the same link. Removing something from what you send never deletes it from your computer.

For example

• The holiday photos, 40 GB of them, to the whole family, without a cloud account or a size limit.
• A project folder for a colleague, kept up to date: every file you add or change reaches them.
• The footage of a film for the editor, straight from your disk to theirs, at the speed of your connection.

Good to know

• Your computer has to be on, and OurStick open, for others to get your files. Closing its window does not quit OurStick, and it opens by itself when the computer starts. There is no copy anywhere else.
• Everything is encrypted on your computer before it leaves it (how). The key is only in the link, so anyone who has the link can take everything in it: send it only to the people it is for.
• Directly when possible. When your computers can reach each other, the files go straight between them. When they cannot, the encrypted data passes through a public relay, more slowly.
• You see who has it. OurStick shows how far each computer that got your link has come (“A Mac has all of it, up to date”), never its name unless its user writes one.
• To stop, choose Stop sending… (you can start again later), or Make a new link…: the old link stops working for everyone, and you send the new one to whom you want.