diff --git a/README.md b/README.md
index b6c45ca1..cc969724 100644
--- a/README.md
+++ b/README.md
@@ -2674,6 +2674,7 @@ set any of the following environment variables to disable its associated optiona
 | `PRTY_NO_CFSSL`      | never attempt to generate self-signed certificates using [cfssl](https://github.com/cloudflare/cfssl) |
 | `PRTY_NO_FFMPEG`     | **audio transcoding** goes byebye, **thumbnailing** must be handled by Pillow/libvips |
 | `PRTY_NO_FFPROBE`    | **audio transcoding** goes byebye, **thumbnailing** must be handled by Pillow/libvips, **metadata-scanning** must be handled by mutagen |
+| `PRTY_NO_IMPRESO`    | do not try to load js/css files using `importlib.resources` |
 | `PRTY_NO_MUTAGEN`    | do not use [mutagen](https://pypi.org/project/mutagen/) for reading metadata from media files; will fallback to ffprobe |
 | `PRTY_NO_PIL`        | disable all [Pillow](https://pypi.org/project/pillow/)-based thumbnail support; will fallback to libvips or ffmpeg |
 | `PRTY_NO_PILF`       | disable Pillow `ImageFont` text rendering, used for folder thumbnails |
diff --git a/copyparty/util.py b/copyparty/util.py
index 6a6352de..5cd16b5f 100644
--- a/copyparty/util.py
+++ b/copyparty/util.py
@@ -3941,7 +3941,7 @@ def hidedir(dp) -> None:
 
 
 try:
-    if sys.version_info < (3, 10):
+    if sys.version_info < (3, 10) or os.environ.get("PRTY_NO_IMPRESO"):
         # py3.8 doesn't have .files
         # py3.9 has broken .is_file
         raise ImportError()
diff --git a/scripts/docker/innvikler.sh b/scripts/docker/innvikler.sh
index a2521dc2..01c7dc0a 100644
--- a/scripts/docker/innvikler.sh
+++ b/scripts/docker/innvikler.sh
@@ -32,6 +32,9 @@ rm -rf \
   /tmp/pe-* /z/copyparty-sfx.py \
   ensurepip pydoc_data turtle.py turtledemo lib2to3
 
+# speedhack
+sed -ri 's/os.environ.get\("PRTY_NO_IMPRESO"\)/"1"/' /usr/lib/python3.*/site-packages/copyparty/util.py
+
 # drop bytecode
 find / -xdev -name __pycache__ -print0 | xargs -0 rm -rf
 
diff --git a/scripts/make-sfx.sh b/scripts/make-sfx.sh
index cc14fb4f..fc9cf90f 100755
--- a/scripts/make-sfx.sh
+++ b/scripts/make-sfx.sh
@@ -237,6 +237,8 @@ necho() {
 	tar -zxf $f
 	mv partftpy-*/partftpy .
 	rm -rf partftpy-* partftpy/bin
+	#(cd partftpy && "$pybin" ../../scripts/strip_hints/a.py; rm uh)  # dont need the full thing, just this:
+	sed -ri 's/from typing import TYPE_CHECKING$/TYPE_CHECKING = False/' partftpy/TftpShared.py
 
 	necho collecting python-magic
 	v=0.4.27
diff --git a/scripts/sfx.py b/scripts/sfx.py
index a1b6477f..f1a4682f 100644
--- a/scripts/sfx.py
+++ b/scripts/sfx.py
@@ -413,6 +413,9 @@ def run_i(ld):
     for x in ld:
         sys.path.insert(0, x)
 
+    e = os.environ
+    e["PRTY_NO_IMPRESO"] = "1"
+
     from copyparty.__main__ import main as p
 
     p()
diff --git a/scripts/strip_hints/a.py b/scripts/strip_hints/a.py
index 59aa76ec..7c74e53d 100644
--- a/scripts/strip_hints/a.py
+++ b/scripts/strip_hints/a.py
@@ -84,6 +84,9 @@ def uh2(fp):
         if "  # !rm" in ln:
             continue
 
+        if ln.endswith("TYPE_CHECKING"):
+            ln = ln.replace("from typing import TYPE_CHECKING", "TYPE_CHECKING = False")
+
         lns.append(ln)
 
     cs = "\n".join(lns)