- cross-posted to:
- android@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- android@lemmy.world
If you want a easy, reliable and cross-platform way to share files between computers, phones, etc, it may be of your interest.
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There are many good sollutions for this use case. Personally I use Warpinator — it is pre-installed in Linux Mint and just works.
Works perfect for me. Have been using for like a year
This is great except you need to be on the same wifi / local network. Worked with the wife for a bit, but we get annoyed having to “turn it on” when we send each other photos.
You can use something like PairDrop instead. It is open source and browser based.
Doesn’t solve my problem of having to both turn on our sharing. But a nice app nonetheless
If I understood you correctly ShareDrop should fix your problem, there you can “add” someone from a different network via QR-code
How would you have anticipated this to work without being on the same network?
Bluetooth is slow and low range.
Airdrop is proprietary Apple-only.
Transfer via internet is both slower, and potentially expensive for you due to mobile data caps. Worst of all it would require hosting of servers to facilitate the transfer, which is both a point of potential attack and a significant cost for someone to operate, which isn’t really sustainable for a free and open source application.
What would you propose?
I did not downvote you by the way, and I am asking because I am genuinely interested in your thoughts.
Using kde-connect for that, works really nicely cross platform.
Also inb4 “Discord community server - no thanks” :D
I love KDE connect have been using it for years.
Only issue is recently I tried it on my raspberry pi and some features don’t work. Specifically I can’t get clipboard sharing or remote input to work on my raspberry pi.
Oh, that sucks, wanted to use it for that too
You might want to check out Magic Wormhole The “Warp” flatpak uses it.
I don’t like it being HTTP based and TLS (certificate?), nor I am a fan of flutter and the other 70-ish dependencies (https://github.com/localsend/localsend/blob/main/app/pubspec.yaml).
KDEConnect is great and does way more than file sharing, I’ll stick with that.
Stupid question from an ignorant fool: how does this differ from just using bluray to transfer files?
Burning physical bluray discs can take quite a lot of time.
I meant BLUETOOTH. Lol. I mistyped. xD
Also disk drives are basically non-existant these days. But to each their own.
I mistyped. I.meant Bluetooth. Lol.
That being said, disk drives are extremely common if you build your own PC. 😈
Idk about now… But BluRay Disk drives were quite expensive and not worth it, only worth it if you could burn Blu rays but those were even more expensives. So not common at all. Even physical games that could have benefit from then used just multiple DVDs instead, like the Flight Simulator 2020 which uses likes 10 DVDs
You said disk drives, not specifically bluray disk drives. The former is not entirely uncommon yet, though the latter may be. Although in retrospect it may have been obvious by context that that’s what you were talking about. Sorry about that.
Well actually you got confused as I am not the guy who did say “disk drives”, that’s somebody else.
In any case I understood you as talking about the non BluRay indicating they are common in builds.
I mentioned BluRays because that’s the only one that nowadays could make sense to have and could be common to add to a build, but not even that is being used commonly due to being expensive and basically only used by movies and those are usually played elsewhere.
I honestly don’t think most people would bother building a new PC with a normal disk drive, they are completely useless. New games/software/video/music are digital or use BluRays, except music I guess. And any other uses has been replaced with external USB drives or other mediums as those are better in many ways. So unless you have some specific need it’s worthless and if you have a need a external USB disk drive is more practical.
Haha
Answering the question you meant to ask, blueray is a physica… just kidding.
LocalSend is basically like bluetooth file sharing over WiFi. Bluetooth, especially the fallback 2.0 is notoriously slow and short ranged. The situation got better with BLE, 5.0 and Long Range. Still, both devices need to speak BT. Ap*le’s iOS is well known to ignore BT file sharing capabilities while implementing own proprietary solutions. On desktop, the situation is still bad. I once tried to send a file between two Windows machines via BT, and it was a horrible user experience. LocalSend (and similar) fix this by implementing cross platform apps and using readily available API’s to share files with few clicks and reasonably high speed between a plethora of devices. I guess, if you don’t have the aforementioned problems, you won’t need LocalSend et al.
especially the fallback 2.0 is notoriously slow and short ranged.
So that’s why my Bluetooth file transferring back in like 2015 was slow as balls! I also assumed it was the devices I had. Lol. Which is weird considering I could have sworn I had also done BT file transfers with other devices previously and it seemed a lot faster. (None of these were Apple devices).
Ap*le’s iOS is well known to ignore BT file sharing capabilities while implementing own proprietary solutions.
Rude.
[Everything else you said]
That makes a lot of sense! Thanks for explaining. :D
It does work over network, so you don’t need any physical connection apart from being in the same network. Therefore, it’s easier, faster, less complicated, and more.
I mistyped. Lmao. I meant BLUETOOTH. Haha.
Magic wormhole is way more flexible
OnionShare. Its more secure and works even if the device isn’t local
Magic wormhole is faster
But it’s really slow because it uses Tor. Sure, there are some use cases that require anonymity, but it doesn’t make sense for most users.
Isn’t that horribly insecure? I have my doubts regarding privacy. LocalSend sends to the device directly, without an intermediary.
I’m pretty sure it only uses the intermediary to establish a P2P connection over WebRTC.
Is there a reason I need something more than scp?
Yes, you send files from/to your phone with an app that looks clean and modern
I have an app that does exactly that over scp…
What is that? I am curious because I haven’t seen a competent SCP app for a few years
I just use AndFTP, with SSH. Works fine for local and remote file system navigation. I use it to move files android<->various linux machines at least weekly.
It is good that such app works for you, but from what I’ve seen AndFTP is only available in Google Play store, and with bundled ad in the free version and paid otherwise. In comparison, LocalSend is none of that, and it is available on FDriod as well. LocalSend is also FOSS from protocol to the app through and through, and although SSH technology itself is secure, the security of the client depends. These are all the reasons to answer your question of “I need something more than scp”. I use SSHFS myself too in the case of file backup, but also LocalSend for different scenarios such as “I need this video to be sent to my computer ASAP”. If you are not convinced, feel free to overlook the project, that doesn’t mean the app has zero use case
i just use
python -m http.serverEasy.
Why this over Syncthing?
Syncthing is nice, but Localsend has a more user-friendly interface.
Its more convenient to send just the specific files i need rather than syncing a whole folder. I use syncthing to keep folders in sync between computers and local send to send stuff from my phone to my computer
@avidamoeba @edu4rdshl one sends one file one syncs a lot of files
Some in this thread said that LocalSend can send many files, folders too. 🤔
Really great software. Works like a charm most of the time, the apps are quite okay, sends files locally. The first low-barrier solution to share stuff between wildly different devices since e-mail.
I’ve been using this for a long time now, and it’s godsend.
Sending files between iOS, Android, Windows, Linux and other devices is great!
