webusb VS file-system-access

Compare webusb vs file-system-access and see what are their differences.

file-system-access

Expose the file system on the user’s device, so Web apps can interoperate with the user’s native applications. (by WICG)
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webusb file-system-access
12 18
1,337 674
0.6% 0.4%
4.3 3.3
about 18 hours ago 8 months ago
Bikeshed Bikeshed
GNU General Public License v3.0 or later GNU General Public License v3.0 or later
The number of mentions indicates the total number of mentions that we've tracked plus the number of user suggested alternatives.
Stars - the number of stars that a project has on GitHub. Growth - month over month growth in stars.
Activity is a relative number indicating how actively a project is being developed. Recent commits have higher weight than older ones.
For example, an activity of 9.0 indicates that a project is amongst the top 10% of the most actively developed projects that we are tracking.

webusb

Posts with mentions or reviews of webusb. We have used some of these posts to build our list of alternatives and similar projects. The last one was on 2025-02-05.

file-system-access

Posts with mentions or reviews of file-system-access. We have used some of these posts to build our list of alternatives and similar projects. The last one was on 2024-08-17.
  • 在浏览器中进行文件操作
    1 project | dev.to | 19 Sep 2024
  • Magic Wormhole: get things from one computer to another, safely
    31 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 17 Aug 2024
    As someone who's been working on a file upload service for a while, this is the only real way to download very large files on Firefox.

    The file system access API is a great way to write chunks of a file at a gime, but for now Firefox doesn't support it

    https://wicg.github.io/file-system-access/

  • The web just gets better with Interop 2024
    5 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 1 Feb 2024
    You can read about the privacy concerts the community group published [1].

    [1]: https://wicg.github.io/file-system-access/#privacy-considera...

  • I spent two years building a desktop environment that runs in the browser, it's finally in beta!
    6 projects | /r/programming | 9 Jul 2023
    WHATWG File System Standard provides a means to write directories and files to the private origin storage associated with a Web page origin. If you want you can use WICG File System Access API to write data directly to your filesystem in the browser. WHATWG File System Standard uses the same FileSystemDirectoryHandle and FileSystemFileHandle defined by File System Access API.
  • How to execute arbitrary dynamic shell scripts from and read output in the browser
    1 project | /r/linux | 22 Jun 2023
    Chromium-based browsers support File Systeam Access API.
  • "Can't open files in this folder because it contains system files"
    1 project | /r/photopea | 18 Jan 2023
    We have stopped using the file system access API: https://github.com/WICG/file-system-access/issues/401
  • SQLite WASM in the Browser Backed by the Origin Private File System
    17 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 12 Jan 2023
    Where file handling is concerned, there are at least

    - File System Access API, https://wicg.github.io/file-system-access/

    - File Handling, https://github.com/WICG/file-handling/blob/master/explainer....

    - Origin Private File System, https://github.com/WICG/file-system-access/blob/main/AccessH...

    There was also Storage Foundation API to which the reaction was "I don't think it's an acceptable outcome for the web platform to have that many ways to work with files" :) https://github.com/mozilla/standards-positions/issues/481 This one never saw the light of day.

  • Learn Postgres at the Playground
    9 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 17 Aug 2022
    Huh. Disregard what I wrote entirely, then. Reading through https://github.com/WICG/file-system-access/blob/main/AccessH..., I can see how they’ve bypassed most of the problems I saw—I was making unnecessary assumptions.

    Thank you for correcting me.

  • The State of WebAssembly 2022
    3 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 21 Jun 2022
    > Browsers have never let anything (not even JS) have raw access to the host FS

    I'm not sure what you mean by "raw access", but the File System Access API certainly allows web applications to do a lot of things.

    > The File System Access API (formerly known as Native File System API and prior to that it was called Writeable Files API) enables developers to build powerful web apps that interact with files on the user's local device, like IDEs, photo and video editors, text editors, and more.

    https://web.dev/file-system-access/

    > After a user grants a web app access, this API allows the app to read or save changes directly to files and folders on the user’s device. Beyond reading and writing files, this API provides the ability to open a directory and enumerate its contents. Additionally, web apps can use this API to store references to files and directories they’ve been given access to, allowing the web apps to later regain access to the same content without requiring the user to select the same file again.

    > Additionally this API also makes it possible for websites to get access to some directory without having to first prompt the user for access.

    https://wicg.github.io/file-system-access/

    It's not just a draft, it's been part of Chrome since version 78 in 2019.

    > After a user grants access, this API allows web apps to read or save changes directly to files and folders on the user's device. It does all this by invoking the platform's own open and save dialog boxes.

    https://blog.chromium.org/2019/09/chrome-78-beta-new-houdini...

    Discussion at the time:

    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21032537

  • How to Persist Web App Data in the User File System?
    3 projects | /r/Frontend | 14 May 2022
    In the post, the Vite webserver is only used to serve the HTML and JS static files to the browser. When the user saves or opens text files, the code uses the web File System Access API (https://wicg.github.io/file-system-access/) to interact with the user file system.

What are some alternatives?

When comparing webusb and file-system-access you can also consider the following projects:

workerd - The JavaScript / Wasm runtime that powers Cloudflare Workers

datasette-lite - Datasette running in your browser using WebAssembly and Pyodide

libwdi - Windows Driver Installer library for USB devices

file-handling - API for web applications to handle files

actually-serverless - Dynamic HTTP Endpoints in your Browser

wasmbuilder - Javascript package that helps to build wasm code by hand.

evilgophish - evilginx3 + gophish

construct-stylesheets - API for constructing CSS stylesheet objects

postgres-wasm - A PostgresQL server in your browser

standards-positions

byoda - Data breach resistant application: Bring Your Own Database

fs - File System Standard

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Nutrient - The #1 PDF SDK Library
Bad PDFs = bad UX. Slow load times, broken annotations, clunky UX frustrates users. Nutrient’s PDF SDKs gives seamless document experiences, fast rendering, annotations, real-time collaboration, 100+ features. Used by 10K+ devs, serving ~half a billion users worldwide. Explore the SDK for free.
nutrient.io
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