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mozilla/send

★ 13,263FreeMarkerAudience · developerComplexity · 3/5LicenseSetup · moderate

TLDR

Firefox Send was Mozilla's end-to-end encrypted file sharing service where files were scrambled in the browser before upload so servers could never read them. The project is archived and no longer maintained.

Mindmap

mindmap
  root((firefox send))
    What it does
      Encrypted file sharing
      Client-side encryption
      Link-based access
    Architecture
      Node.js server
      Redis sessions
      S3 file storage
    Deployment
      Docker support
      Self-hostable
      Env var config
    Status
      Archived 2021
      Community forks active
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Code map

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Things people build with this

USE CASE 1

Self-host a private, encrypted file sharing service for your team where files never touch a third-party server

USE CASE 2

Study how client-side end-to-end encryption works in a real Node.js web application

USE CASE 3

Deploy a community-run fork of Firefox Send with features added after Mozilla's shutdown

USE CASE 4

Use the codebase as a reference for building browser-based encryption into your own file sharing tool

Tech stack

Node.jsRedisAWS S3Docker

Getting it running

Difficulty · moderate Time to first run · 1h+

Requires Redis for session storage and an S3-compatible bucket, project is archived with no active maintenance from Mozilla.

Mozilla Public License 2.0: you can use, modify, and share this code freely, but any changes to existing files must be released under the same license, Mozilla's branding must be removed from self-hosted versions.

In plain English

Firefox Send was a file sharing service built by Mozilla, the organization behind the Firefox browser. It let anyone upload a file and share a link with another person. Files were encrypted before being uploaded, so only the person with the link could access the contents. Mozilla ran a public version of the service, but the underlying code was also open source so others could run their own copies. The key feature was end-to-end encryption, meaning the file was scrambled on the sender's device before it ever left their computer. Mozilla's servers stored the encrypted data but could not read the actual file contents. The recipient used the shared link to download and decrypt the file on their own device. Mozilla shut down the public service in September 2020 due to reports that it was being misused to distribute malware. The repository was officially archived in 2021. The source code remains publicly available under the Mozilla Public License 2.0, so developers can still run their own private instances of the service, but Mozilla's trademarks and branding must be removed if you do. The server is a Node.js application that can use Redis for session storage and AWS S3 or a compatible service for file storage. Configuration is handled through environment variables, and the repository includes documentation for building and deploying with Docker. Since the project is archived, no further development is happening on it. Community-maintained forks exist that have continued adding features since Mozilla's shutdown of the official service.

Copy-paste prompts

Prompt 1
Help me deploy a self-hosted instance of Firefox Send using Docker Compose with Redis for sessions and a local file system instead of S3
Prompt 2
Show me how the client-side encryption works in Firefox Send so I can add the same approach to my own file upload feature
Prompt 3
Configure Firefox Send to use Backblaze B2 as the S3-compatible storage backend instead of AWS
Prompt 4
Walk me through setting up Firefox Send with environment variables for a private team file sharing server on a VPS
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