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
  • @[email protected]English
    12•6 days ago

    I use KDEConnect. I don’t know about iPhone but it works with Android, Linux and Windows.

    • @[email protected]English
      4•6 days ago

      I have tried to use KDEconnect over and over, It doesn’t work on my work network, it doesn’t work on most of my home network, If my laptop my cell phone come up as different IPs it gets confused. It’s discoverability is just absolutely horrible except for a select number of plain vanilla networks.

      • @[email protected]English
        2•6 days ago

        Damn that sucks :(. Seems to me I have to disable my VPN in order to discover devices, but I can re-enable it afterwards. I use it mostly for clipboard sharing between devices.

        • @[email protected]English
          3•6 days ago

          My home network is split between wired and wireless, they’re on different IP ranges. I have every proper forwarding protocol and UDP sniffing everything set up so that devices can talk to each other across subnets.

          It refuses.

          So at home I can set it up on Linux to use a static IP to find my phone. And the phone kind of deals with it and works most of the time. But then I go to work and my IPs are the two devices change. Then I’m SOL.

          Also if I’m home and I’m roaming onto one of my other networks to talk to security cameras or something it’s incapable of talking to my PC.

          Honestly it’s discovery is just bad for me. I really wish that it’s supported a list of IPs, or gave me some kind of client I could run in concert with tail scale or I could move s*** around it’s just absolutely inflexible and for no good reason.

  • @[email protected]English
    5•6 days ago

    I mean, the fastest method is likely to just plug the phone into PC and pretend it’s a flash drive?

    • @[email protected]English
      5•6 days ago

      From memory MTP is pretty flaky and quite slow.

      ADB push is pretty good but at that stage rsync is just as easy.

      Put SSH in the phone and you can do it all from the computer too.

      • @[email protected]English
        1•6 days ago

        MTP’s not bad anymore. It works perfectly well in Windows Linux and Mac these days and is as fast as anything else.

    • @ChapulinColoradoEnglish
      1•6 days ago

      I don’t know if it is always the fastest. I know they said android, but for example on not too old Apple phones (pre-usb c), I had the impression you could get better throughout on wifi compared to a cable connection. Maybe that’s just apple trying to squeeze money on proprietary connectors, but other manufacturers seem to copy their worst takes sometimes though.

  • arthurpizzaEnglish
    2•6 days ago

    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.

  • @one_knight_scriptingEnglish
    1•6 days ago

    Do you have any hosting in your home lab? Preferably something for running a docker container, but a hypervisor could do the job too.

    Nextcloud is an option if you do. Technically speaking you could properly protect it and make it public. You don’t have to do that though. Any file you upload on your computer could be copied to your phone or vice versa. If it’s public, then this could be done from anywhere.

      • @one_knight_scriptingEnglish
        1•5 days ago

        Can’t say I’ve used that… Yet. I like nextcloud because besides being compatible with Linux/Windows and having an Android app, it also has a simple web UI to access the files. It’s probably closer to self hosted OneDrive than anything else I can think of. Kinda like the simplicity of pairdrop though.

  • EvilHaitianEatingYourCatEnglish
    1•6 days ago

    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?

    • @[email protected]English
      7•6 days ago

      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.

      • @uranibabaEnglish
        2•6 days ago

        Had the same issue before, cable was the cause.

  • @[email protected]English
    1•6 days ago

    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.