Hey,
I was wondering what folks use to quickly send a file or a link between your PC and android phone in a lightweight and self hosted way.
Currently I use syncthing to copy files around, but I’m looking for something more immediate, and quick than doesn’t involve searching for folders in a file manager.
Example use case: Send a file from PC to phone. Notification pops up on phone, tap it to access.
(PC runs OpenBSD)
What lightweight software do you guys use?
Stuff I tried so far:
- syncthing
- xmpp
- tox
- scp and termux.
- magic wormhole
- telegram saved messages
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Here are a bunch of local services I’ve used at one point or another from phone to PC or PC to PC. Not sure if any links are out of date.
KDE Connect
Wormhole (Closed Source)
- Site: https://wormhole.app/
LocalSend
- Site: https://localsend.org/
- Source: https://github.com/localsend/localsend
SnapDrop
- Site: https://snapdrop.net/
- Source: https://github.com/RobinLinus/snapdrop
ShareDrop
- Site: https://www.sharedrop.io/
- Source: https://github.com/szimek/sharedrop
FilePizza
- Site: https://file.pizza/
- Source: https://github.com/kern/filepizza
Original Wormhole
- Site: https://webwormhole.io/
- Source: https://github.com/saljam/webwormhole
PeerTransfer
JustBeamIt
- Site: https://justbeamit.com/
- Source: https://github.com/justbeamit/beam
Send Visee
- Website: https://send.vis.ee/
- Source: https://github.com/timvisee/send
- List of instances at: https://github.com/timvisee/send-instances
Hey wormhole is closed source? Wow I didn’t knew that.
There are two, the original open source version and its forks, and then the closed source version.
+1 Love LocalSend!
+1 for LocalSend. Well worth checking out.
+1 KDE Connect. File transfer works great on Android, Linux, and even on Windows 10/11! Clipboard sync is also a game changer; super easy to copy and paste across devices.
I use KDEConnect. I don’t know about iPhone but it works with Android, Linux and Windows.
I mean, the fastest method is likely to just plug the phone into PC and pretend it’s a flash drive?
I love localsend.
Works on Linux, Android, iOS, Windows, and Mac. It is basically an OS agnostic Airdrop.
It’s FOSS, so you can go to the Github and build from source for OpenBSD, but I have no idea if that would work.
Dart (the language it’s written in) doesn’t work on BSD, so sadly that’s out of the question for now.
Dang, that’s too bad. Hopefully one day!
I usually use kde connect.
KDE Connect also works on Gnome, Windows and Android. I can’t recommend it enough. Transfering a single image from phone to PC is instantaneous
And having a unified clippboard is just so convenient
I often spin up a quick python http server. Just go to the folder which has the files you want to transfer and run the following command:
python3 -m http.server. This will server the folder contentServing HTTP on 0.0.0.0 port 8000 (http://0.0.0.0:8000/) .... On your phone you can then browse to http://PC_IP:8000 and download what you want/need.Is it safe though?
Safe as in encrypted and/or authenticated? Not at all! I only do this on networks I fully trust and with files that are not too sensitive. But it’s quick and easy to set up. All my machines have python installed so hence the idea.
Too much typing, especially if transferring from phone to computer.
Thanks though.
