Share Links

Any Freenet app can be linked to from outside Freenet, for example a chat message, an email, or a QR code. The link 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.

Don’t want to build the URL by hand? Visit freenet.org/open with nothing after it (no #), and it doubles as a small tool. Paste any Freenet link: your app’s own local link, a try.freenet.org link, a freenet: or freenet:// link, or an existing freenet.org/open link. Pick who it’s for, and copy the result. It runs entirely in your browser; nothing you paste is sent anywhere. Pasting a try.freenet.org link, or an existing freenet.org/open link that already has ?via=browser, pre-selects “for anyone” as a convenience; every other input defaults to “for people who already run Freenet” until you choose otherwise.

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, then shows ONE big button plus a collapsed “Other ways to open” with the rest. A first-time visitor from an unfamiliar link should see exactly one obvious thing to click, not a row of equally-weighted unknowns. The four possible buttons are:

Open on this computer (the default 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. It’s a single shared demo peer, so it can be slow or busy under load. See the ?via=browser section below for the tradeoff this implies for higher-traffic sharing. Apps that hold keys a visitor should keep on their own peer, currently just the Ghost Key vault, get a note saying so instead of this button; the list is LOCAL_ONLY in open-link.html.
Open in Freenet: freenet:<contract-id>/<path>..., which the visitor’s own Freenet opens on their local peer. The handler (freenet-core#5726) first shipped in 0.2.140, so until peers have updated, this button stays in “Other ways to open” rather than being the default primary. 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. Visiting /open/ with no fragment at all shows the link-making tool described above instead of a dead end.

Choosing the primary button: `?via=`

By default the primary button is Open on this computer, on the assumption that most people following a link already have Freenet. If your audience mostly doesn’t, for example a link posted to Facebook or a general audience, add ?via= before the #:

https://freenet.org/open?via=browser#<contract-id>/<path>?<query>#<app-fragment>

?via=browser: skips the page entirely. Once the link validates, the page immediately redirects to the try.freenet.org target with no click needed, since that destination is a plain https:// page and always reachable, so no separate landing page is needed to explain it. Plain https is not the freenet: scheme, so this redirect doesn’t need a user gesture, and it only fires once the fragment has already validated. An invalid link never redirects; it shows the normal “looks broken” page instead. This is what the Facebook-audience case above wants. Since try.freenet.org is one shared peer, this suits occasional or small-audience sharing rather than a high-traffic post. freenet-core#5773 tracks scaling it up. A LOCAL_ONLY app (the Ghost Key vault) never redirects: the page shows Open on this computer with a note explaining why, and the link-making tool won’t produce a ?via=browser link for it.
?via=local: same as no via at all (spelled out for clarity in a generated link). Open on this computer stays the primary button.
?via=app: makes Open in Freenet the primary button instead. Only worth setting if you know your audience is already on 0.2.140 or newer; on an older release the button simply won’t do anything, same as today.
Anything else, or no via at all, falls back to the default above. Old links you’ve already shared are completely unaffected.

via is read from the query string, which, unlike the fragment, freenet.org’s static host does see (it’ll show up in an access log as ?via=browser, for instance). It only ever carries this one word, never the target: the contract id, path and app fragment stay in the URL fragment exactly as before, so freenet.org still never learns what any particular visitor opens. via doesn’t create any new destination either; it only picks among the same three prefixes (127.0.0.1:7509, try.freenet.org, freenet:) the page already uses.

What it doesn’t do