How LocalShare Handles Your Data
LocalShare is a peer-to-peer file sharing tool. The files you share are never uploaded to or stored on our servers — they transfer directly between your devices once a connection is set up. Our server's only role is briefly relaying the connection handshake (WebSocket signaling) between two devices, and it only introduces devices to each other when they're on the same local network. It decides this from your IP address. If you link a device to your network, the server remembers that link, in memory only, until it expires after one hour. Shared file listings automatically expire after 72 hours.
We log basic, anonymized usage data to understand how LocalShare is used: a salted, one-way hash of your IP address (the raw IP is never stored) and your country, derived from an offline lookup, per connection; and the size of files or length of text shared, per share event. We never log file names, text content, or whether a shared file was ever actually downloaded — the server has no visibility into that, since downloads happen directly between devices.
LocalShare uses Google AdSense to display ads on some pages and help support the site. Google and its partners may use cookies and similar technologies to serve ads based on your visits to this and other sites. You can learn more about how Google uses this data at policies.google.com/technologies/partner-sites, and manage your ad personalization settings at adssettings.google.com.
If you are visiting from the EEA or UK, you may see a consent message asking for permission to use cookies for personalized advertising.
If you choose to support LocalShare, the donation is handled by Ko-fi or GitHub Sponsors on their own website. We do not receive or store your payment details. When you dismiss the support message that can appear after a download, your browser remembers that on your own device so the message stays away; that information is not sent to us.
If you submit feedback through our suggestions form, your message is emailed to us and is not stored or shared beyond that.
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