Troubleshooting

Every error message in the app maps to one of the situations below, with concrete next steps rather than “try again later”.

“Room not found or expired”

Rooms self-destruct after 10 minutes without a join, and after the session ends. Ask the sender to create a fresh invite. Links are also single-session: a link that worked once will not work again by design.

Stuck on “establishing encrypted connection”

Both devices online? A device on airplane mode or captive Wi-Fi (hotel login pages) cannot negotiate.
Corporate or campus network? Many block UDP entirely. ShareDrop.org automatically falls back to a TCP/TLS relay, which takes a few seconds longer — but networks that also intercept TLS can break it. Try a phone hotspot to confirm.
VPN on either side? Some VPNs disable WebRTC or force relays. See how VPNs affect transfers.
Strict firewall at home? Routers with symmetric NAT need the relay path; if your network blocks our relay ports (3478/5349/443), transfers cannot proceed.

Transfer starts, then stalls

Brief network changes (switching Wi-Fi networks, walking out of range) trigger automatic recovery: the connection renegotiates and the transfer resumes from the last verified chunk. If the app shows “connection interrupted, waiting to recover” for more than a minute, one side likely lost internet entirely or the device went to sleep — wake it and keep the tab in the foreground.

“Verification failed” on a received file

The SHA-256 checksums did not match, so the file is not what the sender has. The partial file is discarded automatically. This is rare on healthy connections; resend the file. If it repeats consistently, the source file may be changing while being sent (e.g. a log file still being written) — pause whatever is writing it.

“This file is too large for this browser”

Your browser lacks streamed saving, so the file would have to fit in memory. Receive on desktop Chrome/Edge instead, or split the content. Background: file size and platform limits.

Safety codes do not match

Stop. Different codes mean the two devices are not talking to each other directly — a wrong device joined, or the connection was replaced somewhere. End the session, create a new invite, and share it over a channel you trust. Persistent mismatches on a network you control are worth reporting to us.