Dropnook

English · Deutsch · dropnook.dropnook.app

Instant sharing for your home network — like AirDrop, but for every device. Get a text or a file from your phone to your PC, from Windows to a Mac, from Android to an iPhone: open one web page, drop it in, and it is on every other device at once. No app, no login, no cloud — everything stays on your own server.

Something has to leave the house? Share a single file or text through a link that expires by itself, optionally with a password. It is served by a second, locked-down container — Drop itself is never reachable from the internet.

Dropnook™ is the project's name; on your devices it is simply Drop — the page calls itself "Tower Drop", after your server.

• Text fields with word, character and link counts; unsaved text survives reloads and lost connections.
• Uploads of any size — resumable, with progress visible to everyone.
• The page is called "<server name> Drop", with the name read live from Unraid.
• Screenshots straight from the clipboard with Ctrl+V; pictures with a preview, a large view and Copy into the clipboard of another computer.
• 17 languages, picked from the browser.
• Five colour layouts — teal, gold, blue, violet, coral — each in light and dark.
• Optional users: up to five, each with a PIN, an area of their own next to the shared one, and their own colour.

Containers	drop (Drop itself, your network only) and drop-share (share links, internet)
Image	ghcr.io/dropnook/dropnook:2
Data	the Unraid share drop → files/, texts/, shares/ (with users also users/)
Drop	https://drop.yourdomain.com — in your network
Share links	https://drop-share.yourdomain.com/k7m3x-9pq2r — from anywhere

yourdomain.com stands for your own domain throughout.

Made for Unraid, and this guide is for Unraid — but Drop runs on any Linux host with Docker Compose, too: see Without Unraid.

How it fits together

Your reverse proxy and your certificates stay yours — Drop only expects what is listed under What Drop expects from your reverse proxy.

What you need

• A server with Docker. Recommended, and what this guide shows: Unraid with the plugin Compose Manager Plus (Apps → search for it → Install). Any other Linux host with Docker Compose works, too — see Without Unraid.
• Two free addresses in your LAN, one for drop, one for drop-share.
• Your own domain with two names — without one, Drop works by IP address, just without sharing to the internet and without HTTPS:
  • drop.yourdomain.com → the LAN address of drop — simplest as a DNS record at your domain hoster (a private address there is harmless), or as a local DNS entry in your router or DNS server.
  • drop-share.yourdomain.com → your public IP address (with a changing IP: dynamic DNS).
• A reverse proxy reachable from the internet, for sharing.
• Recommended: a certificate for drop.yourdomain.com (a wildcard *.yourdomain.com works) — then Drop uses HTTPS in your network, too.

Installation

Only in your network, without sharing to the internet? Then one container is enough: in Unraid's Apps tab (Community Applications), search for Dropnook and install it. It runs drop alone with SHARING=off — no second address, no reverse proxy, no domain. Drop gets an address of its own in your network (network type Custom: br0; put a free address into Fixed IP address) and opens at http://<that address>/. Rather Bridge? Then Unraid itself has port 80 — change the port in the template, e.g. to 8088, and open http://Tower:8088. For HTTPS (e.g. for the live room), enter a certificate from Cert Warden under Show more settings. Create the share for its files first (step 1). The steps below set up the full stack, with sharing.

1. Create a new share "drop" on Unraid

A share of its own for Drop's files and texts. In the Unraid web interface, Shares → Add Share:

• Name drop, on the pool you want.
• Secondary storage: none (if the share uses Exclusive Access).
• Minimum free space: generous — a large upload must not fill the pool to the brim.

Drop never creates this share itself. Inside it, it creates files/, texts/ and shares/ on its own (with users also users/).

2. Check Unraid's Docker network

In the Unraid web interface, Settings → Docker (switch on Advanced View at the top right):

• Under the custom networks, br0 must show your LAN's subnet and gateway — the network both addresses from above are in.
• If your reverse proxy runs on this Unraid in bridge or host mode, set Host access to custom networks to Enabled — otherwise it cannot reach drop-share. (Docker has to be stopped to change it.)

3. Add Drop as a stack in Compose Manager Plus

In the Unraid web interface, tab Docker → section Compose further down → Add New Stack → name drop.

On the new stack, Edit Stack:

1. Tab Compose: paste the content of compose-projects-drop/compose.yaml (raw) — as it is, there is nothing to change in it.
2. Tab .env: paste the content of compose-projects-drop/.env.example (raw) and fill in your values (what the .env is for):

This is the beginning of the README. Read the rest at the original. Read the full README ↗