Tired of File Size Limits? This Open Source Tool Sends Large Files Directly Browser to Browser

There are ways to transfer files over the internet. Twenty years ago, it was FTP for technically advanced people and emails for lazy people. (And Torrents for legally challenged people),

Then came Dropbox and other cloud services and things have moved in that direction.

But sharing large files through cloud services has its own quirks. Most services either have strict size limits, require account creation, or quietly store your data on their servers even when encryption is involved.

This is where Cheezy Pizza comes in.

What does Cheezy Pizza do?

CheezyPizza is an open source, browser-based file transfer app that uses WebRTC to transfer files directly between two browsers.

This means there is no server in the middle, no login, no installation required. Just open the site, share a link, and the transfer happens peer to peer.

It is actually a fork of FilePizza, which is a pretty solid tool but has its limitations. Like large files would fail, and there is no way to pause or resume a transfer if something goes wrong.

This is the reason why Jeevan forked it into Cheezy Pizza and started adding the features he needed.

Here's what Cheezy Pizza does differently than File Pizza:

• Large file support: It works reliably for files larger than 10 GB. However, some browsers may restrict this.
• Pause and resume feature: Interrupted transfers pick up from the last byte, with progress saved via OPFS or IndexedDB. It happens on the downloader side only.
• Flow control: High/low watermarks on the WebRTC data channel prevent fast senders from overwhelming the receiver.
• SHA-256 verification: files are checked before being written to disk.

Project repo mentions that all WebRTC communications are encrypted using DTLS.

The project is being actively developed, with more features planned.

You can try it at cheezypizza.in or check out the source code in the repository.

Cheezy Pizza website

Testing Cheezy Pizza

The idea is simple. You upload the file to the Cheesy Pizza web interface. You can password protect the file, if you want.

You can choose to password protect the transfer as well

And then you get links, short and full URLs, both can be used. There is also a QR code generated for ease.

I uploaded Omarchy ISO file of around 7 GB and shared it with my teammate Sreenath, who is a few thousand kilometers (or miles) away from me. When he started the download, I could see the status changed to file transfer as my file was now being uploaded.

Initially, the file transfer was in a few KBps but soon it the speed increased into few hundred KBps, and then it peaked at around 7 MBps, I think. It took 2-3 minutes to reach the max speed.

On the downloader side, the browser shows a notification about persistent data storage.

It also shows that the downloader can close the tab and resume the transfer later.

To test the pause resume feature, Sreenath closed his browser a few times and opened the link again. CheezyPizza correctly recognized the the file was being downloaded earlier.

Earlier inerrupted file download can be resumed

At the other end, it showed me, the uploader, several interrupted transfers.

Password protect the transfer

By the way, the file transfer can be password protected, too. Just add a password while initializing the file upload and share the password with the downloader.

Uploader need to stay online

🚧

The pause-resume feature only works at the downloader's end. If the uploader closes the browser before it was downloaded completely, the link will be dead. If there were several downloaders and at least on of them completed the download, that downloader will continue to seed to incomplete downloaders, but no new downloads may be initiated. This is a bummer.

When I, as the uploader, closed the browser tab, things were lost and it could not be resumed.

Worth a bite?

Many large file transfer (and cloud storage) services store data on their servers, even if it is encrypted. If you want a peer-to-peer alternative, Cheezy Pizza is worth trying.

FilePizza does the same job, of course, but Cheezy Pizza adds a few extra toppings to that -- and no, it's not pineapple.

The pause and resume feature is a nice touch, but if the uploader closes the tab, everything falls apart and that is a problem.

I am not sure whether Cheezy Pizza supports self-hosting, but there is a Docker mention in the README and since it is web-based, self-hosting should be possible.

By the way, if you want to share files between devices on the same network, a local file transfer tool like LocalSend works well for that.

Would you use a service like Cheezy Pizza for large file transfers over the internet? Share your thoughts in the comments.

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Bambu Lab Keeps Locking Down, The Community Keeps Building Up

People who dabble in 3D printing know that Bambu Lab makes some of the most capable consumer 3D printers on the market right now. And no, this is not sugarcoating it; the hardware is genuinely good, catering to tinkerers at varying price points.

The software, though, is like a slow-burning wound for anyone who values owning what they buy. Things have been downhill for some time now, and it started back in January 2025, when the company announced a new authorization and authentication system for its X1 Series printers.

Some Lore Info

They pitched it as a security update, with the change requiring Bambu Lab authorization for basic printer operations, locking out third-party tools in the process even in the offline LAN mode.

The backlash was severe enough that Bambu had to walk back parts of the announcement, add an FAQ, and introduce a "Developer Mode" as a compromise. The damage to trust, however, was already done.

By June 2025, the same authorization system had rolled out to the P and A series as well, cutting off third-party software from working with Bambu printers by default.

More recently, they went after an open source developer who had built a fork of OrcaSlicer that restored direct communication with Bambu printers by studying the publicly available Bambu Studio source code.

He had not touched any proprietary library, yet Bambu Lab threatened him with a cease-and-desist, which led to the project being taken down. The Software Freedom Conservancy later confirmed this was a violation of the AGPLv3 license that governs Bambu Studio and its upstream projects.

This is where open source alternatives like Bambuddy come in. The tinkerer community has made it clear that locking down hardware people paid for tends to produce exactly this kind of response.

Bambuddy: Overview ⭐

Bambuddy is a self-hosted, open source print management system for Bambu Lab printers, built by a developer known as Martin (maziggy). It runs in Docker, sits on your local network, and gives you a full web-based dashboard to manage your printer.

It offers you things like real-time monitoring, print management, file archiving, scheduling, and a lot more, all running locally on hardware you already own, whether that is a pricy Raspberry Pi 5, a NAS, or any other Linux-capable machine.

Bambuddy also has a print queue with drag-and-drop reordering and time-based scheduling, so you can line up overnight jobs or off-peak prints without having to babysit the machine.

For anyone running multiple printers, it supports dispatching to a fleet with automatic load balancing based on which machine is idle and has the right filament loaded.

Remote printing is handled through Proxy Mode, which lets your slicer talk to your printer from anywhere in the world without port forwarding or touching Bambu's infrastructure. Traffic is forwarded securely with full end-to-end TLS, and there is built-in Tailscale awareness if you already run a private mesh network.

Not only that, but it also supports a wide range of Bambu Lab printers, including the X1 Carbon, X1E, P1P, P1S, P2S, A1, A1 Mini, and the newer H2D, H2D Pro, H2C, H2S, and X2D.

For people who want to cut desktop slicers out of the loop entirely, there is an optional sidecar that runs OrcaSlicer or Bambu Studio headlessly in Docker. With this, you get a Slice button directly in the Bambuddy interface, multi-plate support, per-AMS filament matching, and the finished file drops straight into the queue when it is done.

Get Bambuddy

The source code for Bambuddy can be found on GitHub, licensed under AGPLv3. Installation guides, setup walkthroughs, and feature documentation are all on the official wiki.

You can also check out the Bambuddy website for a live demo and a full feature overview before committing to a self-hosted setup on your homelab.

Bambuddy

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AliasVault Is The BitWarden Alternative You Didn't Know You Needed

Passwords are one of those things everyone knows they should handle better but rarely do. The bare minimum is not reusing them across sites, and beyond that, you really want a password manager doing the heavy lifting for you.

If you have been looking for options, you have probably come across Proton Pass (partner link) and Bitwarden as two of the more popular cloud-powered choices. For local hosting, something like KeePassXC lets you keep everything on your own machine without any cloud dependency at all.

But I recently came across something a bit different. It is web-based, fully open source, works completely outside any ecosystem, and does a fair bit more than just storing passwords. And you can self-host it as well. So let me tell you about it.

AliasVault: One Vault for Everything

Offered as an open source, end-to-end encrypted password and email alias manager, AliasVault lets you store passwords and create new aliases for use on the web.

The latter works like this. Instead of using your real name and email address everywhere, you generate a unique identity, password, and email alias for each service you sign up to.

If one of those services ever leaks your data or starts spamming you, you know exactly where it came from, and you can just kill that alias.

Operated under XIVISOFT, this is the work of Leendert de Borst, a software developer from the Netherlands who has been building privacy-focused tools since 2013. The project itself is licensed under AGPL-3.0, and the source is available on GitHub.

The cloud version runs on dedicated servers in Germany (Hetzner), within the EU, making it GDPR-compliant. There is also a full self-hosting path via Docker if you would rather keep everything on your own infrastructure.

🚧

AliasVault is yet to reach its first stable release. So use it with caution, as things might break.

Initial configuration

Getting started with AliasVault on the cloud version means heading over to app.aliasvault.net and creating a new vault.

The first thing I noticed is that it does not ask for an email address at signup. You just pick a username, anything you want, and that's all the identifying information it collects.

Before you get to the vault itself, you are asked to agree to the terms and conditions. This is pretty standard for any web service, though the terms here are straightforward and not particularly alarming.

The short version is that you cannot use AliasVault for illegal purposes, you are responsible for keeping your account secure, and the project itself is not liable if you lose your master password and your data becomes inaccessible.

Once past that, you set your master password, and AliasVault shows a strength indicator right there during setup. A strong password is not optional here given the zero-knowledge architecture and the sensitive nature of the contents; lose it and the vault contents are gone for good.

If you are coming from another password manager, the empty vault screen immediately displays an import button. AliasVault can pull in credentials from 1Password, Bitwarden, Chrome, Dashlane, Firefox, KeePass, KeePassXC, Proton Pass, and Strongbox.

Adding new logins

Clicking on the "+ New" button will give you multiple options to add a new entry for Login, Alias, Card, and Note. During my use, I mostly stuck to the Login entry, using it to add new credentials to the vault.

The interface presented here is easy to get used to. You enter the username, add the password, enter the website URL, and click on "Save Item" to get an item added to the vault.

You can even generate passwords, and from the left-hand side menu or at the bottom of the item entry, you can add more content to a vault item, such as email addresses, notes, a two-factor authentication secret, file attachments, or a custom field.

Just click on the plus button to get going.

Keeping things organized is straightforward too. Creating a folder takes about three seconds. Click "+ New Folder", type a name, and hit "Create". Moving an existing login into a folder is done through the item's edit screen, where a Select Folder dropdown lists all your folders.

What is missing, though, is anything resembling bulk management. There is no drag and drop to move items into folders, no batch select to reorganize a bunch of credentials at once, and no multi-select for bulk deletion.

If you are migrating a large existing vault and want to sort everything into folders, you are doing it one item at a time.

The search functionality does make navigating a crowded vault easier, at least. The search bar at the top of the interface queries across your entire vault in real time, pulling up matching items as you type, with icons shown.

Creating an alias

This is where AliasVault separates itself from a regular password manager. Switching to the Alias tab in the "+ New" panel lets you create a fictional identity tied to a service, not just a username and password.

You give it a name and a website URL, hit Create, and AliasVault generates the whole package. A unique email address at the @aliasvault.net domain, a username, a strong password, and a fictitious identity complete with a first name, last name, gender, and birth date.

All of it is ready to use at signup for whatever service you are creating the alias for.

Any emails that land on that alias address show up directly on the item's page inside the vault. I tested this with Facebook, and it worked well enough, getting multiple emails, including the OTP needed to confirm the signup.

The only wrinkle was Facebook asking me to verify the account with a live selfie. ☠️

Another thing to keep in mind is that the built-in email server is currently receive-only.

You cannot reply to or forward emails from your alias addresses on the cloud version. It is a deliberate limitation for now, listed on the roadmap as a future paid feature, so if two-way alias email is something you need, that is worth factoring in.

The browser extension

AliasVault also has browser extensions available for Chrome, Firefox, Edge, Safari, and Brave. I tested it on Vivaldi using the Chrome extension, and the experience was clean.

Logging in connects directly to aliasvault.net, and you get a "Log in using Mobile App" option here as you do on the web app if you would rather not type your master password. I didn't test this one, but it should work well.

Once inside, the extension mirrors the web app fairly closely.

You get your full vault list with website icons, folder filters, a search bar, and a "+" button to add new items without leaving the browser. The Emails tab also works here, so you can check alias inbox activity without switching to the web app.

It even shows relevant saved credentials automatically when you land on a website you have a login stored for.

The Settings tab also has a few things worth knowing about. You can switch the vault unlock method between your master password and a PIN code, with the PIN falling back to the master password after three failed attempts.

There is also an auto-lock timeout you can configure, ranging from 15 seconds all the way up to 24 hours, or never if that is your preference. Clipboard behavior is configurable too. Copied sensitive data is cleared automatically after 10 seconds by default, with options to change that to 5, 15, or never.

Closing words

AliasVault is one of those tools that makes you wonder why no one put these two things together sooner. A password manager that also handles email aliasing is something that Proton Pass does, but there are some limits involved.

While it is still in beta and missing a few things like bulk credential management and reply support for aliases, nothing about the current state feels rough or half-baked. If privacy matters to you and you have been running a password manager and a separate alias service side by side, this is worth a serious look.

---

Suggested Read 📖: Bitwarden vs. Proton Pass

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Meet Melia: A Privacy-First, Modern Desktop Email Client Made Just for Linux

Every once in a while, a project comes that is very adamantly heavy on its principles and it is always a breath of fresh air in a world where corporate greed forms the basis of all the services we use.

This time it is for a service that is extremely basic and essential, e-mail.

There are a few email clients for desktop Linux already. Thunderbird, Evolution, Geary, to name a few.

I am not saying that they are not good but there is always scope for improvement and new features. And Melia does just that. It brings some additional features, a privacy enthusiast will appreciate.

✋

Non-FOSS Warning! Melia might be awesome but unfortunately it is not an open source software. We covered it here because it is available for Linux.

What Makes Melia Different?

Let's see what makes Melia so special.

Local and offline

All e-mails on the application are stored locally in a SQLite database, which means you don't have to run around with your internet connection, waiting for your data to sync. Even the credentials are stored in the OS keyring (where your OS account passwords are stored), which makes it as safe as it gets from online cyber attacks.

Supports 32+ services

There are 32 pre-programmed presets for most of the common e-mail providers such as Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo, Protonmail, iCould and so on. You need to ensure the allowance of an SMTP connection from the plan that you have on your particular service, however.

Contact management

If you are particular about managing the contacts, Melia builds the address book automatically from sent and received emails. You can edit it and organize it as you want. It also helps with instant autocomplete when composing a mail. You also get stats on each contact.

Rules for a more organized inbox

Get statements from your bank, boring but good to keep for the future? Create a rule and send it automatically to a folder. Your inbox remains clean, and the emails are preserved.

There are many more ways to use the rules and organize the inbox on Melia.

💡

There are also Tidy and Trim features that help you consolidates duplicate IMAP folders and delete old messages in bulk (with your manual approval, of course).

Proper HTML email rendering

HTML-based emails are everywhere, and they need to be displayed the same way they are intended to. Melia uses Shadow DOM isolation, intelligent dark mode transformation, and post-render quality audits to display your favorite newsletters, like FOSS Weekly, beautifully.

Search across accounts

🚧

Melia is free for one email account. If you want to use more than one email account, you can purchase a perpetual license for a one-time fee of $10. Melia developer, Joshua Richard, says that this will help him with the development of the software.

There's a unified full-text search that can find anything across all the accounts that you've added to the client at blazing fast speeds (especially considering all the e-mails are available offline).

Privacy and Security Take Center Stage

There are some really great security features, solving some issues, which I admit didn't even know were issues. The entire focus is on security with verifiable zero telemetry, and privacy instead of analytics, such as:

Tracking pixels neutralized

Some services use tracking pixels to mark e-mails as read back to the sender. The tracking pixels are thus neutralized on Melia, preventing a great deal of invasive telemetry.

Automatic suspicious sender flagging

The senders whose names don't match with the ones assigned to the address are automatically flagged, preventing a lot of scam/spam e-mails that one might receive.

Message authentication

All e-mails received are authenticated against SPF, DKIM, and DMARC to ensure nothing falls through the cracks.

One-click unsubscribe

The worst part of being spammed by a service is getting unrequited e-mails all day annoyingly. Good news is that you an unsubscribe them with just one click, making the whole process much easier.

There are still more minor features, all of which you can check out here.

Transparency You Don’t Usually Get in Email Clients

Apart from the privacy features, Melia prides itself on the transparency it provides to the users. What contributes to that? I'm glad you asked:

Trust center

There's an inbuilt Trust Center, which allows users to block or restrict the activities of the senders, giving you the option to block out e-mail addresses or entire domains, with a full activity log and statistics of all changes made to block or trust any sender.

Connection monitor

The Connection Monitor feature that shows exactly what server the information is coming from or going to in real time, making it as clear as possible that Melia only talks to the servers.

A Simple, Familiar Interface

Melia is built on Electron, which means the interface will translate consistently to any distribution you might want to use. Some will scoff at Electron but it does provide a rather beautiful graphical interface, in my opinion.

They have a full explanation as to why they chose Electron despite the bad rep it gets, and their answer is satisfactory considering it works well, safe, and "claims to keep the RAM usage within 250MB".

The interface itself is slick and simple. There are 2 vertical panels: account list and categories, list of e-mails on the selected category, and the e-mail itself. There's a possible fourth panel if you open the Connection Monitor.

It comes with two inbuilt themes, dark and light, and both are easy on the eyes. Theme can be switched manually or automatically based on your system theme. There are several buttons on top to easily access some of the features, like creating a new e-mail, search, contacts, Connection Monitor, Trust Center and settings. Speaking of which, the settings provide some very simple options, such as:

• Theme, and list density
• Import/export options
• Font settings
• Sync settings (default being every 5 minutes)
• Sound notification settings (you can set a custom one for new mails, opening the app, deletion, etc.)
• Licensing and updates

There's an easy to access sync button right on top of the accounts list on the left panel. There are also two toggle switches on the bottom panel, for sound and theme.

My Experience Setting Up Melia

Initially, I ran into some issues setting up Melia.

Two of my accounts, Google and Protonmail, were being difficult to set up. Then I realized the errors I was making.

First, that Gmail requires 2-step-authentication for it to be set up on Melia, so after doing that, there wasn't an issue.

As for Protonmail, however, using it on an external client isn't a feature available on the free tier, which made it not possible for me to sync up.

So just make sure you read the instructions when setting up accounts; they're usually pretty clear and tell you exactly what to do.

Installing Melia on Linux

Since Melia claims to be an e-mail client for Linux, it offers several choices of packages. So, you have Deb package, AppImage, Snap and Flatpak. You won't find it in the distribution's repository because the software is not open source.

While Debian and Ubuntu users have the deb package option, rest of the distros can choose among AppImage, Flatpak and Snap.

Get Melia

Final Thoughts: Is Melia Worth Trying?

Melia makes several claims and backs all of them up well. It is secure, transparent, easy on the eyes, and very simple to use. The functions all work very stably, primarily including writing and reading e-mails.

It is definitely worth a shot if you want to give it a trial shot with just one account, and then you can decide for yourself if it is worth the $10 to add your other accounts as well.

I would have been much more happier if it was open source. It's one of the classic cases where software seems so much like open source but is not actually.

What do you think of Melia? Let us know in the comments.

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The Single Biggest Reason Why ProtonMail is Killing My Productivity

I use ProtonMail for all official communication related to It's FOSS. Around 2020, I took their Visionary plan and switched from Google Workspace for the @itsfoss.com emails.

The bundled offer of email, VPN, calendar, drive and password manager is a good ecosystem in its own. I am happy with their offering and continuous feature additions and improvements. Well, for the most part,

One thing that I am still missing after all these years is the canned response feature.

The lack of saved replies

If you have ever used Gmail, you probably would have heard of the 'canned response' feature.

The idea is simple and it solves a major problem for people who get emails that often need similar replies. A canned response lets you save template responses. It lets you insert the template response in the email. Here, you can quickly modify it and hit the send button.

Without this feature, I have the usual responses saved in my knowledge base. I have to open that, go to the appropriate response section, copy it and then paste it in Proton Mail, modify the message if needed and then hit the send button.

This could have been fine if it was a once-a-day activity. But if I have to do it multiple times a day, I surely lose time in it. This is especially frustrating because I am aware of the existence of the canned response feature.

It's like being forced to use the mouse when you know the same thing can be quickly done through keyboard shortcuts easily and quickly.

I give you an example. I receive multiple press releases and software coverage requests a day. Often, the reply is similar, with only a little modification needed. Imagine if I could compose the repetitive reply in 2-3 clicks:

0:00

/0:06

I think this feature is more than ten years old and is available for free to all Gmail users. I don't see a reason why ProtonMail cannot offer it.

There are a few more things that can help us ProtonMail users save some time

In Gmail, if you are replying to an email and type Hi its predictive text feature already suggests the responder's name. It does save a few keystrokes.

Now that is Google but I am sure ProtonMail can work on providing a similar feature without intrusing our privacy.

How come? Well, Proton does provide a deep search option where messages are downloaded to the system and then you can search through email content. By default, you can only search through the email subject and sender. This way, the Proton server doesn't see your messages and yet you can do a full search.

Perhaps something on that line to make our lives more convenient? I don't know how technically challenging it could be, that's why it's just a suggestion.

Another convenient feature would be to make their AI integration more useful. ProtonMail has integrated its (private) Lumo AI but I don't find it helpful.

Perhaps it can be utilized to provide predective text? If not that, at least it can be used to compose replies to emails?

For now, it provides a few options: Write for me, proofread, shorten, expand and a couple of options on changing the tone of the message.

The Write for me feature needs full prompts on what to write. If it could read the reply, locally in the browser, and suggest a response, that would be good. Basically, a "compose a reply" option here.

I know, not everyone is a fan of AI and many find it repulsive but if Proton has to become a real private alternative to Google Workspace, it has to offer the cutting edge tools and features. And AI is the hottest buzzword that can raise a shoe company's stocks 800% in a single day.

Come on, good people at Proton. Give us lazy users the boon of template response 😄

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