Hi everyone,
I currently use Telegram to send photos, PDFs and text messages between my Android phone and my Debian laptop. It works, but everything goes through a third-party server, and I would like a fully local, privacy-friendly alternative.
What I need: Send photos, PDFs and other files in both directions (phone ↔ laptop) Send short text messages or clipboard content Works locally
Thanks for any advice and experience!
Browser-based P2P file sharing: https://pairdrop.net/
Syncthing was made for this use case.
LocalSend is pretty good
Honestly, I would probably recommend localsend. It’s a pretty good way of transferring files between multiple devices locally. Only downside is that you have to have the app running to transfer it. You can’t just open it on one device and share to another if it doesn’t have localsend open.
Edit: Honestly though KDE connect is another great option too. Depending on your use case it could be even better than localsend.
Peace be with you
I have no experience with Ubuntu or Debian, but I think the old method is still the best:
just use a good USB cable. USB 3.0 or higher is significantly faster for data transfer.
fully local, no cloud, no server. 🙂kdeconnect
Cable
cx explorer on android, both ways, it can act as ftp server, or sftp client. laptop can do both aswell, of course
Whilst I’m not sure if it covers everything, I’ve been playing around with a Nextcloud on my home server which is just visible to devices on my home network (i.e. so my phone has to be connected to WiFi at home to reach it).
Since your laptop is Linux you can easilly run Nextcloud in it as a service.
KDE connect works well. You could also use something like nextcloud or SFTP and always on VPNs and whatnot. Not sure what your setup looks like.
Ich nutze “Relay”(das ist ziemlich neu) oder KDE-Connect. Die funktionieren ähnlich gut.
Kde connect
KDE Connect can do clipboard contents, notifications, SMS from your PC, and file transfer, but I like Syncthing’s approach of folder synchronization better than sending files individually. I use both.
you can browse android folders from your pc as if it is a local volume, so you can copy files in bulk easily without having to keep a mirror.
KDE Connect is phenomenal! I freaking love that when I copy text on my PC or Phone it shows up on the clipboard of the other one. And being able to take real screenshots with Print Screen, crop them, and send them straight to my phone with like 3 clicks instead of taking an awkward photo of my monitor when I’m trying to text someone about something on my computer is perfect.
being able to take real screenshots with Print Screen… when I’m trying to text someone about something on my computer is perfect.
I’m surprised by this workflow instead of sending the text from the computer (using KDE connect if “text” means SMS in this context).
I did mean SMS, yes. I guess I just haven’t fully explored the options of the app yet and just saw the “send to phone” option and ran with it. Lol
i just wish it worked with Signal, GVoice. my cell # is more of a placeholder than an in-use communication endpoint.
Those have a desktop app and a web version, respectively. I can see the appeal of having everything in one place, but you can already use Signal and GVoice from your PC.
LocalSend? https://localsend.org/
LocalSend is the best solution.
I can also reccomend KDE Connect for everything except file sharing; even though that’s the specific ask in this post, I’m just a huge evangelizer for it even if it’s file transfer as implemented is terrible in my experience.
