By now everyone is tired of waiting for Apple to release the Share file feature of iDisk. One of the best features of MobileMe not showing up was a big disappointment. Apple has not even updated the iDisk public folder page, which is mostly embarrasingly Aqua-ish.
Then, a clever geek Thierry Cornelis used a web debugging tool, to sniff out the URL that iDisk sends when one attempts to download a file from a public folder. Turns out, it’s a simple extension to the URL!
Files in the Public folder of your iDisk can be accessed using a direct link in the this format:
http://public.me.com/yourusername/filename?disposition=download
Working example:
http://public.me.com/thierry.cornelis/DirectLinkToiDisk.pdf?disposition=download
That’s it! Just replace ‘yourusername’ with, well, your username, and file name with whatever file you want to link up to. Make sure you include the file extension as well. If your filename has spaces, replace the space with ‘%20′, for instance, “my file.zip” will become “my%20file.zip” in the url. The best part is, the url even works if your public folder is password protected!
Unfortunately, there is still no way to share a file from your private folders, for that we’ll have to wait till Apple actually implements the share file feature. Hopefully Apple is readying up MobileMe 2.0 for release with Snow Leopard.
{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
Awesome tip! iDisk is suddenly 10x more useful
Does anyone know whether the same modification will work for any website wanting to provide for downloading? Or is this unique to the iDisk?
homepage.mac.com/username/.Folder/filename
Remember the dot before the folder name and be sure it;s capitalized. This will work for any file on your iDisk as far as I know
Suggestions: I need idisk to have some additional features and I do not think I am alone in these suggestions. I need to be able to assign different names and passwords to different clients to limit what folders different clients can access. I need to be able to set folders so that files can be uploaded and downloaded but no one other than me can delete a file. Clients need to be able to upload and download folders and not just files.
Until these simple and necessary features are added, the public folder of iDisk in a non functional feature that is so limiting it is almost useless.
Is this still working for all of you?
It seems the URL has changed a bit.
See my comment on my blog:
http://web.me.com/thierry.cornelis/Site/Blog/Entries/2009/1/13_Direct_linking_to_files_in_the_Public_folder_of_a_MobileMe_iDisk.html
I think someone at Apple discover the tips and they disable it in a few time.
Now it don’t work anymore …..
I did it trying every showed solution, with and without a dot on the sub-folder name, take off sub-folder name on the URL, putting a blank character (%20) where required on the URL description too, but nothing to do.
Some other tricks ?