Hi everyone! 👋
I recently completed a weekend project: a Python-based file sharing app that works over local networks. I built it to deepen my understanding of networking and have a bit of fun with Python and its libraries (sockets). This post is a quick walkthrough of my project, what it can do, how I built it and what I learned in the process.
What the App Does
Here's a breakdown of the features:
- Graphical Interface (Tkinter) -> Has one tab for sender and one tab for receiver.
- Sender Side -> The sender side has the following features: Auto-discovers hosts on the local network, manual ip entry if preferred, port selection, drag and drop support, manual file browsing, and file integrity check using hash verification.
- Receiver Side -> The receiver side has the following features: Choose listening port, selecting folder to save received files and start/stop receiving buttons.
This project uses socket, threading, tkinterdnd2, and a few other standard Python libraries - no external dependencies.
Why I built it?
Honestly? I had a free weekend and an immense desire to finally do something with Python and networking — not just read about it. In the past, I’d spend hours going through tutorials, blog posts, or watching videos, but I rarely built anything concrete. I’d get stuck in the cycle of consuming information without ever putting it into practice. I’ve had many project ideas over the years — cool concepts and fun challenges I wanted to build. But more often than not, the GitHub repos ended up empty or abandoned. Why? Because I got stuck in perfectionism. I wanted to do everything myself, from designing to coding to testing, without asking for help or using any shortcuts. I thought that was the only “right” way to learn and grow. But this mindset became a huge barrier.
It held me back from actually finishing projects and sharing my work. Instead of progress, I got stuck in endless tweaking, doubting, and self-criticism.
This time, I wanted to break that habit. I decided: No overthinking. No waiting for the "perfect" idea. Just build something practical that works.
I’ve always enjoyed working with Python — not because I want to be a full-time developer again, but because it’s flexible, elegant, and fun. I also wanted to understand how real-world networking worked under the hood — sockets, broadcasting, file streams, ports — all those concepts that I’d read about but never truly internalized.
So I picked a challenge that would combine both: a local file-sharing app. It was a perfect blend of GUI work, sockets, and system-level communication — and it gave me a tangible reason to dive into networking from a hands-on perspective.
It wasn’t always smooth sailing — I ran into weird VM issues, firewall rules, and networking quirks — but that was the whole point: to learn by doing. And I’m glad I did
What I learned?
Broadcasting can be tricky with VMs. I tested the code with my laptop and VM and learned that doesn't always work between VMs and host machines. I solved it by using custom broadcast ip (192.168.1.255) as a fallback mechanism.
Not everything works magically. It might work in test environment but when experimenting in real world, some things break, some policies are enforced and so on.
Using GitHub copilot helped speed things up, but I still had to debug, refactor, and stitch logic together across files.
To divide the apps into modules. Every project I did before had all the code in a single main.py file but this time I decided to break things up. I especially did this because there was one of my specific personal project whose debugging became a nightmare to me because all the code was piled into a single file.
🔗GitHub Repository
You can check out the full code here:
asim-builds
/
File-Share
A simple file share project using python
📁 Python File Share
A simple yet powerful peer-to-peer file sharing app built in Python! Works across devices on the same network.
Supports:
- ✅ One-to-one file transfers
- ✅ Auto host discovery
- ✅ Drag & Drop interface
- ✅ Multiple file transfers
- ✅ Transfer progress tracking
- ✅ File integrity check using SHA-256
🎯 Features
-
📤 Sender Tab
- Select files via file browser or drag & drop
- Enter host manually or use Auto Discover
- Custom destination filename
- Configurable port
-
📥 Receiver Tab
- Choose save location
- Start/Stop receiving with one click
- Set listening port
-
🔍 Host Discovery
- Scan and list available hosts on the network
-
📊 Transfer Progress
- Real-time file transfer status and logs
-
🔐 Integrity Check
- Uses SHA-256 to verify the file was transferred without corruption
-
📁 Multi-file Support
- Send multiple files in one go (automatically zipped)
📸 Screenshots
🚀 Getting Started
✅ Requirements
- Python 3.7+
- Cross-platform (Windows/Linux/macOS)
- No internet connection required (runs…
🧠Final Thoughts
I used to be scared of sharing my work - afraid of being judged, being seen or that my project wasn't good enough. But you know what? I had fun, I learned a lot and I am allowed to enjoy small victories even if its small. That's what matters. If you're learning Python or want to explore socket programming, I hope this inspires you to build something small and meaningful.
Let me know what you think - I'd love your feedback.
Photo Credits: Photo by Rubaitul Azad on Unsplash
Top comments (0)
Some comments may only be visible to logged-in visitors. Sign in to view all comments.