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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I’ll add in Bitwarden Send (including self-hosted vaultwarden), although probably doesn’t make sense if you’re not already using it for password management.
I use SyncMe which synchronizes smb shares to your phone. It’s great once you have it set up, but it does take a little setup. Gotta have shares and whatnot.
KDE Connect as another uas suggested.
Only buggy issue I have is that I use a VPN on my phone to access my local network when away from home. I have the VPN set up with Hairpinning so I don’t have to disconnect from the VPN while at home which occasionally causes issues on my steam deck as the version of KDE Connect on the steam deck does not appear to have an easy way to connect to device via IP. On my desktop and laptop I run Pop!_OS and use GS Connect which gives me an option to connect to device via IP so I have less issues with my phone just randomly not appearing on those computers.
Localsend works great for me.
Yeah, can recommend that one too Although it sometimes seems to have some performance problems with a large amount of files - could be, that it’s already fixed though
Yeah for large folders and stuff probably better to use SFTP or WebDAV
This sounds great. Thanks.
I use ADBFileManager https://github.com/T0biasCZe/AdbFileManager/ which is much faster than MTP
In my testing, the program copies files at speed of approximately 41.6MiB/s (332Mib/s) over USB 2.0, compared to MTP that copies at around 10Mb/s
As I have basically all devices connected to my Nextcloud instance, I simply use that. I don’t have any “time-critical” file transfers though.
Well my transfers aren’t “time critical” either, but life feels easier if I don’t have to jump through hoops to solve a task that involves copy files around.
Re: next cloud, looking for something more lightweight than that.
I’d use anything else that is based on rsync over Syncthing
Does your PC have Bluetooth? Definitely quick and sort of self hosted.
I usually use kde connect.
I use a Gnome implementation of this and it works great too.
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
Yeah, me too. It is quick and easy. I use SyncThing for things I want to keep synced.
I ll just hijack this thread : when plugging my android into laptop, the laptop doesn’t recognise it as anything. And the phone doesn’t give me the option to “share files” instead of just charge. Does anyone knows what’s wrong?
Check if your cable has data lanes, some cables don’t have them and can only be used for charging. Tap the charging notification and check if you can change it to file transfer.
Had the same issue before, cable was the cause.
Open source file manager Material Files lets you set an SSH server as a bookmark and mount it instantly. Moving files around just like like it’s native. Works seamlessly through Tailscale.
I’m using a selfhosted pastebin (microbin) as sometimes I want to transfer text, other files… It’s very efficient and in my instance it’s using 13MB of RAM, which is fairly lightweight for modern standards
This is super-cool, just a shame it’s unmaintained.
I didn’t see it mentioned yet, so I’ll throw warpinator in the ring.
Clients are available for Linux, Windows, Android: https://warpinator.com/
I’m not sure if there’s one the best tool, depending on a case, I use mix of
- scp
- localsend
- croc
- https://github.com/dutchcoders/transfer.sh
- https://github.com/stonith404/pingvin-share
- pbcli (pastebin)
- I also have a script that sends me mail with files attached
