Luckily, there’s a new Mac app that aims to fix all of these issues; it’s called Minbox. With Minbox, you can send files of any size and type fast – often within seconds. All you need is an email address for the person that you wan to share with, and you’re all set. Your recipient will be able to view the file(s) sent to them in any browser, on any device; there’s no downloading necessary on their end. Minbox has a minimal, user-friendly interface that you’ll love.
Setting Up Minbox
- Minbox is in private beta, so you’ll need to sign up for an invite on their website, or you can do so within the app after downloading and launching for the first time.
Once you’ve been invited to the service, head on over to the Mac App Store to download the app. 2. When you first open Minbox, you’ll need to give the app access to your contacts.
Minbox will open and you’ll need to enter your access code. This is also the same screen you can use to receive an access code.
Next, you’ll be prompted to create a Minbox account. You can sign up using your Google account, or you can create an actual account using your email and a password.
Since Minbox uses your email to send files, it would make sense to use your Google account to sign up so that it’s already connected to your desired email address.
If you sign up with Google, you’ll be able to log into your account and give it access to your account right from Minbox. After that is complete, go through the Minbox tour and click the green “GO!” button at the end to get started. 5. A notification will appear below the menu bar asking if you’d like to import your address book. It’s recommended that you do this so that you can send files even quicker. Importing your address book should only take a minute or two.
Sending Files with Minbox
Now, you’re finally ready to start sending those files. There are three ways to do this:
Click on the menu bar icon, click on the paperclip in the bottom left corner and then select one or more files to send. Select one or more files in finder and drag-and-drop them to the Minbox menu bar icon. Within Finder, right click a file, go to the services menu and select “send via Minbox.”
Note: If you just want a short link for sharing on the Web (much like Droplr and CloudApp), choose “share Minbox link” from the services menu instead. The short link for the file will automatically be copied to your clipboard for easy sharing on the Web. You may see a notification pop-up letting you know that “conversion is on” and that you can turn it off. With file conversion on, your files will automatically be converted to reduce the size, which in turn will help to improve upload speed.
Within seconds, your file(s) will be converted and attached to your message. Don’t forget to add your recipient(s) and a message (if you’d like). At this time, you’ll see the the Minbox menu bar icon has a green bar going through it (this bar is usually white).
Once you click on the send button (which you can do before or after the uploads are done), the bar will turn white again letting you know that the file has been sent. Once the file has been sent (within seconds), the entire icon will flash blue and play a “ding” sound. Note: You can also click and hold on the send button to schedule a message to be sent at a later time.
You can send any file type, size and as many as you’d like at one time! You can also attach RAW images and Minbox will take care of the rest. Sharing multiple images at once will even create a stylish, responsive online image gallery.
If you want to be sure that the item was sent, click on the Minbox menu bar icon and then click on the menu icon in the top right corner of the window. From here, you can see recent files that were sent along with the date and time. Clicking on an item will also open it in your browser – each time you share a short link is created for the item or set of items and is viewable on Minbox.com.
If you’re a Gmail user, you will also see the message in your sent folder, so you can also check that way to see if a file was sent.
There are also a few other useful options here that may come in handy. For instance, in Preferences, you can customize the new message keyboard shortcut, enable automatic sharing of your photo galleries to Twitter and/or Facebook and choose to have Minbox launch on system startup.
Final Thoughts
As you can see, Minbox is truly an efficient file sharing app for Mac users. It’s easy to use, comes without limitations, and is super fast! It just works, and that’s really all you need when sharing files, right?
