sendrecv - CLI quick file send/recieve

sendrecv is a Go CLI for repeat SSH-based file transfer between known devices. It keeps the transfer workflow in one binary while relying on ssh and rsync only at runtime.

Status

v1 currently targets macOS and Linux. Windows support and a built-in TUI are out of scope for this release.

Features

• send and recv subcommands built around host presets
• interactive host picking in send, with fzf first and Go fallback
• TOML config with per-host defaults
• configurable send transfer mode: auto, raw, or archive
• automatic raw vs archive decision logic in auto mode
• Go-native tar.gz archive packing and unpacking
• optional auto-extract on the destination side
• strip-common-prefix path mode by default
• opt-in --preserve-tree
• --dry-run and --verbose
• doctor checks for required tooling
• documented Yazi integration, including the companion plugin

Install

See docs/install.md.

Simplest install is Homebrew

brew install connorpink/tap/sendrecv

Linux deb/rpm and MacOS packages also exist.

Quick start

sendrecv config init
$EDITOR ~/.config/sendrecv/config.toml
sendrecv config validate
sendrecv hosts
sendrecv send file.mp4
sendrecv send --no-compress ./big-folder
sendrecv send --transfer-mode raw ./big-folder
sendrecv send ./dir
sendrecv send --remote-host laptop ./dir
sendrecv recv laptop nested/file.txt

Runtime dependencies

The local machine needs:

• ssh
• rsync

The local machine needs ssh and rsync, and the remote machine also needs rsync because transfers run through remote rsync over SSH. If the remote host does not expose rsync on PATH, set remote_rsync_path for that host in the config.

For archive-mode recv, the remote machine must also have a compatible sendrecv binary available on PATH, in a standard Homebrew location, or at the configured sendrecv_path.

For archive-mode send, remote sendrecv is optional:

• if remote sendrecv exists and extraction is enabled, the archive is unpacked remotely
• if remote sendrecv is missing but remote tar and gzip exist, sendrecv falls back to shell extraction on the remote host
• if neither extraction path is available, sendrecv uploads the archive directly into remote_dir and prints the final archive path
• raw single-file transfers for incompressible files still work with just ssh and rsync

send also supports --transfer-mode auto|raw|archive, and --no-compress is a shorthand for --transfer-mode raw. You can make that the default with defaults.send_transfer_mode = "raw" in config.

Helper commands

Archive-mode remote execution uses:

• sendrecv pack --output <archive> --base <dir> <members...>
• sendrecv unpack --archive <archive> --dest <dir>

These are normal CLI commands and can be called over SSH by another sendrecv instance.

Remote Doctor

sendrecv doctor remote <host> checks:

• remote rsync
• remote sendrecv
• remote tar
• remote gzip
• remote_dir readiness
• remote_temp_dir readiness

If remote_rsync_path is configured, remote doctor checks that exact command/path and reports configuration-specific failures.

That makes it possible to see whether the host can do raw transfers only or full archive send/recv flows.

Config

See docs/config.md and examples/config.toml.

Yazi

Yazi is optional. The CLI remains the source of truth and Yazi should call sendrecv, not reimplement it.

The recommended path is the companion plugin, connorpink/sendrecv:

ya pkg add connorpink/sendrecv

The plugin reads hosts from sendrecv hosts --json, chooses a host inside Yazi, and launches sendrecv send --remote-host ... as a background task. See docs/yazi.md.

Architecture

The package boundaries and transfer flow are documented in ARCHITECTURE.md.