Air Sharing Turns your iPhone Into a Wireless Portable Drive; View Documents On-The-Go

Posted by abhleo on 26 October, 2008

1,382 Comments

This item was filled under [ Hacks, tricks ]

With 8GB or more storage on the iPhone, it seems logical to use it as a portable drive.

Though iTunes offers an elegant way to sync music and other media content; it does not allow iPhone users to sync other types of files such as Word documents, Excel worksheet, PowerPoint presentations to the iPhone.

This is where iPhone app Air Sharing, developed by Avatron Software comes in handy. It offers a very simple way to turn your iPhone into a wireless portable drive and also allows you to view documents of various file formats when you are on-the-go.

Air Sharing works exactly as advertised, the iPhone app lets you transfer files to iPhone without any hassle.

With Air Sharing, you can mount the iPhone on Windows, Mac or Linux over Wi-Fi. And, you can then drag & drop files between your computer and iPhone.

It uses the open WebDAV protocol to accept and share files through your file system or web browser.

You can also view documents on the iPhone using Air Sharing’s full-screen document viewer. Air Sharing supports the following file formats:

Microsoft Office Document including Word, Excel and PowerPoint
Apple’s iWork Document including Pages, Number and Keynote
HTML
PDF
RTF (Rich Text Format)
RTFD (TextEdit documents with embedded images)
Plain text document with Unicode support
Source code file (e.g. C/C++, Java, Javascript, XML, etc) with coloured syntax highlight
Movie file (Format supported: H.264, MPEG-4, 3GPP)
Audio file (Format supported: MP3 VBR, AAC, WAV, etc)
Image file (Format supported: GIF, PNG, JPG, TIFF, etc)

How to use Air Sharing

After you have installed Air Sharing on your iPhone, it takes you just a few steps to turn your iPhone into a flash drive. Please find the instructions on how to map your iPhone as network drive on the Windows & Mac (for Linux you can follow the instructions provided in the app under the Connecting tab – Linux).

For Mac OS X

Fire up Air Sharing and remember to turn on Wifi.
When Air Sharing is launched, it’ll show you all the shared folders available. And, you should find a URL (e.g. http://10.0.1.197:8080) in status bar.

Air Sharing

Next, you need to connect to that URL. Say, for Mac users, you can start Finder. Click “Go” -> “Connect to Server…”. Type in the URL.
Within 10 seconds, your iPhone will be shown up in Finder. Now you can just drag & drop file onto your iPhone.

For Windows Vista

Make sure you start Air Sharing and turn on Wifi
On Vista, open Start menu and select Computer
Click “Map network drive” in the toolbar at the top of the computer window
Select a drive letter in drop-down menu
Enter Air Sharing IP address (e.g. http://10.0.1.197:8080)
Make sure the “Reconnect at login” box is unchecked
When prompted, enter your username and password. Please note that Vista may ask for your password multiple times.
Now your Air Sharing network drive should be mounted and ready for use.

For Windows XP

Make sure you start Air Sharing and turn on Wifi
On XP, open Start menu and select “My Network Places”
In the network tasks panel, click “Add a Network Place”
Click “Next” at the Add Network Place Wizard welcome screen
Select “Choose another network location” and click “next”
Enter Air Sharing IP address (e.g. http://10.0.1.197:8080)
Enter a name for this new connection
Make sure the “Open this network place when I click Finish” box is checked
Press finish
When prompted, enter your username and password.
Now your Air Sharing network drive should be mounted and ready for use.

You can even view and download your files from any web browser. However, I found this option to be slow and buggy.

Protecting Air Sharing from Unauthorized Access

Air Sharing also allows you to configure username and password to protect your iPhone from unauthorized access which is quite important for a portable device. You can enable password in Air Sharing’s Settings screen.

You have the option to turn off sharing in case you are not comfortable with the idea of someone being able to access documents in the public area or password protect it as mentioned above.

Avatron Software has recently released an updated version of Air Sharing to incorporate an improved image viewer, full-screen support for document viewing, as well as, support for very high-resolution images (over 100MB). If you have already purchased Air Sharing, go ahead to download the new version.

Conclusion

Air Sharing is a very good storage app for the iPhone and thanks to its full-screen document viewer makes it one of the easiest ways to view documents on the go.

After the initial one-time setup process, Air Sharing works very well and easy to use. It seems to have an edge over DataCase, another iPhone App that I had reviewed as Air Sharing supports Linux in addition to Windows and Mac which both support and also supports a lot more file formats.

The thing I like about Air Sharing is that like DataCase it does not need any additional software.

Air Sharing costs USD $6.99, the same as DataCase and you can download it from this App Store link.

What do you think of Air Sharing? Do you know of a better iPhone app? Tell us in the comments below.