Install wormhole-william with Homebrew, apk, apt, MacPorts, Nix, scoop

Project links

• Homepage
• Upstream docs
• Package manager page

Commands and aliases

• wormhole-william

Project history

Magic Wormhole was publicized to the Python community at PyCon 2016 by Brian Warner as a way to move files like scp but without prearranged hostnames or SSH keys. The protocol uses short human-transmitted codes and PAKE/SPAKE2 to establish a strong shared key before encrypted transfer.

wormhole-william appeared later as an alternate implementation in Go: the GitHub repository was created on 2019-08-28, and the earliest GitHub release returned by the releases API is v1.0.1 on 2019-12-29. Its role is not to redefine the protocol, but to make Magic Wormhole available as a Go library and native-feeling command-line program.

Adoption history

The project README lists third-party users including rymdport, riftshare, termshark, tmux-wormhole, and wormhole-william-mobile. That list shows the Go implementation being used as both an end-user CLI and a library layer for graphical, terminal, mobile, and integration-oriented transfer tools.

By the 2025-03-30 v1.0.8 release, GitHub metadata showed more than one thousand stars, which is notable for a small protocol-compatible file-transfer implementation.

How it is used

The common workflow mirrors Magic Wormhole: one side runs a send command for text, a file, or a directory, receives or chooses a short code, and the other side enters the same code to receive. The code bootstraps encrypted communication; bulk transfer can go peer-to-peer or through Magic Wormhole relay infrastructure depending on network conditions.

For package users, wormhole-william is attractive when a Go binary is easier to deploy than a Python environment, or when another Go program wants Magic Wormhole behavior through a library rather than shelling out to the reference client.

Why package nerds care

wormhole-william is significant because it demonstrates protocol portability. Magic Wormhole became useful enough that package ecosystems wanted more than the original Python implementation: a compact Go client, a reusable Go API, and downstream apps built on the same code.

Timeline

• 2016: Brian Warner presents Magic Wormhole at PyCon as simple secure file transfer.
• 2019-08-28: wormhole-william GitHub repository is created.
• 2019-12-29: Earliest listed GitHub release, v1.0.1, is published.
• 2025-03-30: v1.0.8 is published.

Related projects

• magic-wormhole is the original Python implementation and CLI.
• rymdport and wormhole-william-mobile are downstream applications named by wormhole-william as third-party users.

Sources

• https://api.github.com/repos/psanford/wormhole-william
• https://api.github.com/repos/psanford/wormhole-william/releases?per_page=100
• https://github.com/magic-wormhole/magic-wormhole
• https://github.com/psanford/wormhole-william
• https://magic-wormhole.readthedocs.io/en/latest/welcome.html
• https://us.pycon.org/2016/schedule/presentation/1838/