Share Links

Any Freenet app can be linked to from outside Freenet – a chat message, an email, a QR code – with a link that works whether or not the person clicking it has Freenet installed. Every app uses the same page, freenet.org/open, instead of a per-app landing page.

The format

https://freenet.org/open#<contract-id>/<path>?<query>#<app-fragment>
  • <contract-id> is the base58 contract id from your app’s own local URL (http://127.0.0.1:7509/v1/contract/web/<contract-id>/...).
  • <path>, <query> and <app-fragment> are whatever already follows the contract id in your app’s local link – copy them as-is.

Everything after the first # is a URL fragment. Browsers never send a fragment to the server, so freenet.org never learns which contract, path or query a visitor is opening: it serves the same static page to everyone and reads the rest with JavaScript, in the visitor’s own browser. That is also why an app’s own fragment (state like #store=... or #room=...) needs a second, literal # inside the outer one – /open passes everything after the contract id through unchanged, it never parses it apart.

Example

A Harvest store with local link

http://127.0.0.1:7509/v1/contract/web/6FzSeAUKcqJrveKyU8RJgGKc5jRB1Z2juvxXtwTA4Em9/#store=Ab3Kx9Qm2Zp7Rt4L

becomes

https://freenet.org/open#6FzSeAUKcqJrveKyU8RJgGKc5jRB1Z2juvxXtwTA4Em9/#store=Ab3Kx9Qm2Zp7Rt4L

What the page does

/open validates the contract id and shows four buttons, in this order:

  • Open on this computer (currently the highlighted, primary button) – the target on the visitor’s own local peer (http://127.0.0.1:7509/v1/contract/web/<contract-id>/...), for anyone who already has Freenet installed and running.
  • Use in your browser – the same target on try.freenet.org, a peer we host, for anyone who wants to look without installing anything.
  • Open in Freenet – freenet:<contract-id>/<path>..., which the visitor’s own Freenet opens on their local peer. The handler (freenet-core#5726) ships in the first release after 0.2.139, so until peers have updated this button is styled and ordered as a secondary option. The link has no //: in freenet://<contract-id> the case-sensitive contract id would be the URL’s host, which some desktops lowercase before the handler sees it. (The handler accepts both forms.)
  • Get Freenet – the install guide.

An invalid or truncated fragment shows a “this link looks broken” message instead of guessing at one.

What it doesn’t do

/open makes no network request of its own, and it doesn’t try to detect whether Freenet is running on the visitor’s computer. Checking that would mean probing localhost, which leaks whether Freenet is installed to anything embedding the page and, on some browsers, triggers a local-network access prompt. Whoever built the app already knows how to turn a link back into a working session; /open only carries the address there unread.