Keeping a Long Transfer Alive on Phones and Laptops

With a direct transfer, the file comes straight from the sender’s device. That’s what makes it fast and private. It also means if the sender’s device stops, the transfer stops.

Most stopped transfers aren’t network problems at all. A laptop went to sleep, or someone switched apps on their phone. Here’s how to prevent it.

Laptops and desktops

Windows

• Go to Settings → System → Power & battery → Screen and sleep (on Windows 10: Power & sleep).
• Set “When plugged in, put my device to sleep after” to Never for the duration of the transfer.
• Plug the laptop in. Battery saver modes can throttle network activity.
• Closing the lid usually triggers sleep too. If you need the lid closed, change Lid close action in the classic Control Panel → Power Options.

Mac

• Plug in the power adapter.
• In System Settings → Battery (or Energy Saver on older macOS), turn on the option to prevent automatic sleeping when the display is off.
• Or open Terminal and run caffeinate -d. Your Mac stays awake until you close that window or press Ctrl+C. It’s the simplest trick there is.

The browser itself

Desktop browsers slow down tabs you’re not looking at, to save battery. Transfers usually keep working in a background tab, but to be safe:

• Keep the BoltShare tab in its own window rather than buried among 40 other tabs.
• Don’t put the browser in “efficiency” or “memory saver” modes that can discard inactive tabs. In Chrome and Edge, you can add the site to the list of sites that are always kept active.

Phones

Phones are much more aggressive about saving power, so a little care goes a long way.

iPhone and iPad

iOS pauses web pages almost as soon as you leave them. In practice:

• Keep Safari in the foreground with the screen on until the transfer finishes.
• Turn off Low Power Mode for the transfer.
• Set Settings → Display & Brightness → Auto-Lock to a long time, or Never, temporarily.
• Plug in if it’s a big file. A screen kept on drains the battery.

If the screen does lock mid-transfer, unlock it and go back to the tab. BoltShare will try to reconnect and carry on from where it stopped.

Android

Android varies a bit by manufacturer, but generally:

• Keep the browser in the foreground with the screen on. Android is a little more forgiving about background tabs than iOS, but not reliably so.
• Turn off Battery Saver for the transfer.
• If the phone keeps killing the browser, find your browser in Settings → Apps → [Browser] → Battery and set it to Unrestricted (the wording varies by phone).
• Increase Screen timeout in Display settings.

What happens if it does stop?

It depends on what stopped:

• Brief interruptions (Wi-Fi blips, switching networks, a short sleep): BoltShare reconnects automatically and resumes from the last byte the receiver confirmed, instead of starting over. Keep both tabs open and give it a moment.
• The sender closed the tab or the browser was killed: the file is gone from the browser’s memory, and the transfer can’t continue. Start a new share. On the receiving side, any partly downloaded file should be deleted and re-received.
• The receiver closed the tab: same deal. The partial download can’t be picked back up, so start again.

The 10-second pre-flight

Before starting a transfer that’ll take more than a few minutes:

1. Plug in.
2. Turn sleep off (or run caffeinate on a Mac).
3. Close other heavy uploads, like cloud backup.
4. Keep the tab front and centre.

It feels like overkill until the time a laptop falls asleep at 94% of a 40 GB transfer. If transfers are slow rather than stopping, try this checklist instead.