Creating a makeshift media server

Hi everyone,

Here I am going to explain a quick trick to turn your machine into a makeshift media server (for the lack of a better term). This will allow you to access media files on your machine such as movies, songs, pictures etc. from anywhere inside the wifi that machine is a part of.

Basically, you will be able to view movies, songs etc. from your laptop on any other device (such as smartphone, tablet) without having to explicitly transfer them. This is assuming that both the devices are on same network.

Open a terminal and cd into the directory where your media files reside.

In that directory, execute the following command

python -m SimpleHTTPServer 9999

This will start an HTTP server at the current directory. 9999 is the port number which it will listen to and you can change it to any other port number.

Running the HTTP server will make all the media files in current directory accessible from anywhere in the network by making an HTTP request to this machine. Note down the IP address of this machine.

Now, open the browser on your smartphone or tablet, and type the following URL:

http://<ip_of_your_machine>:9999

For example, in my case, it is http://192.168.0.104:9999/
Port number should be the same as one you gave in above command.

This will show you the list of all files in the directory where Simple HTTP Server is started. Click on any file and browser will invoke media player to play that file.

Press Ctrl+C on the terminal to close this HTTP server.

You can use this trick to watch movies from your laptop on your mobile without having to keep bulky laptop in front of you.

Thank you.