Once upon a time, computing was simple. You had files on a floppy disk. If you wanted to take them to a different computer, you ejected the disk from one machine and put it in another. It wasn’t fast, but it was easy and intuitive. Besides, you probably only had one computer of your own, anyway.
Life has since gotten a lot more complex. You’ve got a desktop, a laptop, a work laptop, your personal and business phones, and a smart watch to boot. You live amongst a swirling maelstrom of terabytes of data. Despite all the technical advances that got you here, it’s still a pain to get a file from one device to another, even when they’re sitting on the same desk. Why?!
This Modern Glitch
Our computers are actually very good at connecting to each other. We have Ethernet devices with auto-negotiation, WiFi and Bluetooth in just about everything, and DHCP for good measure. It’s easy to get devices on the network and online. One might think all this connectivity would make sharing data easy. But we’re not so lucky.
Let’s take a straightforward example. Just getting a JPG off a smartphone requires jumping several hurdles and a little bit of begging to the benevolent tech gods. You can plug your phone in via USB to grab files, assuming you’ve got an Android, but you’ll have to flick through menus multiple times to get it to shift into the right mode to get files off. An iPhone will allow the same but you’ll need an app to help “import” them.
You could alternatively try sending them via Bluetooth, but you’ll have to go through the hassle of pairing, which almost never works first time. You’ll also get glacial transfer speeds and watching the process fail a few times. Alternatively you might see if your phone comes with a proprietary app for transfers, or you could try waiting to sync files to a cloud service or just emailing them to yourself. The latter method will make a mess of your inbox, but at least you get the files across when you need them.
It Was Not Ever Thus
It wasn’t always like this. Jump back a quarter century, and things looked very different. Windows 9x had a massive install base, with Windows XP just bursting on to the scene. You could still sneakernet stuff around with floppy disks if you wanted, of course. But it was also a cinch to set up simple network shares to access files across machines on a home network. It just worked.
Much the same was true of the Macintosh ecosystem. Back then, smartphones weren’t a thing, and few of us were carrying any sort of device with any real amount of data. Things like digital cameras and MP3 players would soon rise to prominence, but getting files on and off them was a dream—simply plug in, and they’d present as a USB mass storage device. No drivers, no passwords, no bloated apps. Just peace.
Of course, that would all change a few years down the line. Take the Windows world as an example. Network shares still exist, and you can set them up if that’s what you really want. Unfortunately, though, they’re so much worse than they used to be at the turn of the century. They’re buried under layers of permissions and user account nonsense that makes enabling them absolutely arcane. Only some of us run multi-user logins on individual machines, even fewer of us choose to run domain-style networks in our homes. In contrast, a lot of us would like it to be easy to pull a few files off the loungeroom computer when needed. However, doing so requires navigating passwords and accounts and setting permissions and if you get the slightest bit of it wrong, you won’t even see the shared files, let alone be able to access them. A task that used to take 3 minutes of setup now takes half an hour or more and a couple trips to Knowledgebase.
It shouldn’t be like this. One can imagine a world where all our devices in the home are allowed to share files openly and freely. Imagine if you could just click into the network tab on your PC, and see everything across all your devices – your laptops, your phones, your desktops and lab machines. Imagine not having to pair your phone or fiddle with utilities or special sharing tools or, god forbid, sending files all the way to the cloud just to move them three feet across your desk. Imagine this, all your files across all your machines at the click of a button, no auth, no nonsense, whether Apple, Windows, or Android. You already have all these devices talking on the same network, so all your stuff should just be there!
Alas, we cannot have such nice things. It’s not just because Big Tech is full of mean people that want to make life worse than it used to be, but it can feel that way sometimes. Instead, it’s more because of boring, sad, practicalities that are difficult to overcome. Security is perhaps the biggest headline issue in this regard. We now use our personal computers to store more private and confidential data than ever.. This makes access control paramount to avoid bad actors getting access to compromising information. There’s also the need to prevent the easy spread of viruses, which becomes very difficult when there’s a permissive file sharing route between devices. Malware has often taken advantage of holes in network sharing protocols as a vector for infection.
Beyond this, there’s the simple problem of interoperability. There isn’t a uniform standard that would allow easy, secure file sharing across laptops, desktops, and smartphones of all makes and models. This would require a large number of different tech companies to all get together, define a solution, and agree to implement it going forward. Sadly, current thinking seems to be that the proprietary solutions we have today are “good enough.” Apple’s AirDrop or Samsung’s Quick Share will get you by if you stay in the right walled garden, for example, and neither cares much to start a dialogue to establish something better and more cross-platform. Few tech companies would be excited about opening up potential security holes by implementing a new broadly-accessible file sharing protocol, either.
Perhaps a metaphor best explains the misery we find ourselves in today. If you live in a safe town with low crime, you might not feel the need to lock your car doors when you pop down to the supermarket. It means you can get in and out of your car without fishing for your keys, which is a great convenience when you’re carrying a bunch of heavy grocery bags. At the same time, you can’t live like this in a nastier place. Bad actors will simply open your door, rifle through your car, and take anything they like. That could end badly for you.
Unfortunately, cyberspace is that nasty place. By and large, we can’t just freely share files between devices because it’s too dangerous to do so. You don’t want your bank accounts drained, or your personal photos used for blackmail, so we have to drench everything in layers of authentication, even in the privacy of our own homes. Perhaps one day there will be some framework that allows us to create a close-knit network of “trusted” devices so we can freely move data about our own protected little bubble. But until then, we’ll have to suffer with Bluetooth passcodes and proprietary apps and the fact that it’s usually quicker to email a friend a photo then to find a way to directly transfer it to their phone which is sitting right next to you. It’s an annoying problem, and one that will not easily be solved.
localsend? works perfect for me
I was going to suggest the same thing!
https://localsend.org/
This tiny app has been amazing to move things between devices when I am not at home.
I have found that it can really struggle when transferring folders with very large numbers of small files, but I think that may be an issue with how Android handles some abstraction and less of a filesystem or transfer issue.
I stopped using anything else except when I need to set a persistent network share.
Localsend works perfectly on Linux, Windows, Android, and MacOS. I don’t have iPhones so I have not tried it yet.
I just tried it for the first time. Simple interface but requires another user at the other end.
Even simpler is chrome remote desktop. upload, download, share the clipboard. I use it every workday to do inventory when I’m upstairs. I use a $30 12 inch Acer chromebook and it works flawlessly.
I still appreciate having local send in my toolbox though!. Thanks for the tip.
Another +1 for localsend here. Regualarly use it to cross the bridge between different systems. Honestly don’t know how I got by before it.
I’d like to see a smart USB “wand” where you could simply point at any two devices and transfer without having to touch either.
Putting this here since it’s at the top…
You guys should also check out syncthing
P2p open source folder sync, has windows, Linux, and android support (maybe iOS? Not sure)
With as much storage space as everything has these days, I find that duplicating data accross devices isnt a big deal for most applications. It’s nice to just have a folder where anything you add to it gets copied over to all devices.
Oh, and it works great over the public internet!
I can copy files from my phone on cell data, over to my work computer on our corporate network without issue.
And it’s not copying that data through a server. It’s a direct connection.
We have the tech to do public internet p2p connections; but very few systems do it. I guess cause that means the vendor can’t control everything with their “cloud”.
https://syncthing.net/
I love syncthing. I do run it in sort of a star topology, though. I have a sync server that get all the different directories shared with it. Then it shares directories with whichever computers need that particular batch of stuff. The only exception is a “phone2phone” share between the wife’s phone and mine that doesn’t need the “server” to be up. Although it does sync to it too. I find this star approach simplifies management of which machine shares what with who.
I’ve had good results sharing a folder with multiple devices and it pretty much works.
I’ve got a music folder that I sync between 2 phones, a desktop, my laptop, and my file server; and it works happily.
My approach has been to have folders by use, and share that folder with any device that needs it. I have everything shared back to a file server too as data redundancy
I’m guessing it helps the reliability of the system when a given folder is live on multiple devices; more options if one of the p2p connections were to go down.
Syncthing is great, but it covers a slightly different use case for me (I mostly use it to back up my photos from my phone). It’s not much use if you spontaneously need to copy a file between two devices.
It works great for me, until I try to send files between smartphones, then it breaks.
It is also a bit slow, transferring way slower than even USB drives or microSD cards.
Thanks for mentioning it, I’ve somehow never heard of it. Looking at it now, and it sure looks like a winner. Plus all the comments in this thread give me some level of trust that it’s safe, good, and does what it claims.
…
Ok, wow—it’s open source too? Fantastic. I think you may have just made my day. Thank You!
Microsoft Phone Link. Mobile and on the PC. Plus whatever app the specific maker has. e.g. Samsung, etc.
Hear me out, please
Low power 2.4GHz or 5GHz radio in your smartphone, tablet, TV, computer whatever
Encrypted
Dedicated for low latency, high bandwidth local sync between devices
Standardized protocol to handle files, video streams, application states
Or maybe make another high bandwidth and ultra low latency wifi dialect. Maybe then finally we can have the dream fulfilled of wanting to stop working on one machine and then pick up from the same exact application in same exact state on another machine.
Doesn’t “why can’t we have a low power, low latency, high bandwidth link on radio spectrum that’s so insanely crowded we now use beamforming antennas to provide yet more ways to divide up the spectrum” answer itself?
lol
KDEConnect works for me just transfering the odd thing between phone and computer.
For backing up my (degoogled Android) phone I use the open source Primative FTP (on F-Droid), start it running and click on the shortcut I have created in Dolphin on my PC, then I can just browse my phone’s files on the computer and copy off what I need to.
Kdeconnect is amazing; I use it all the time.
I also use KDEConnect on my phone, and GSConnect on my Ubuntu computer.
KDEConnect and Localsend are great with minimal setup across multiple platforms. I also really like Warp, which is E2EE using the magic wormhole protocol and also has a web app wormhole[.]app if that is preferred over desktop.
Kermit.
LapLink
Xmodem
UUCP
FidoNet
Tftp
$25 Network (Little Big LAN)
XMODEM
300 baud Modem to Modem – no POTS
IND$FILE
The comments on this article actually support the premise of the article.
At the time on my writing this there are 3 top-level comments each putting forward a different option. 2 of them are apps which don’t support each other and one is a completely new tech stack. XKCD #927 comes to mind.
But that’s choice. That’s a good thing, right? That’s what the OSS evangelists told me.
Randall is an effin’ genius, up there with Douglas Adams (“What we have is technology; what we want is something that works.”)
I disagree. The comments show that there are indeed multiple ways of sharing data between devices. Some are complicated hassles, true, but others are quite simple. “You already have all these devices talking on the same network, so all your stuff should just be there!” KDEConnect + GSConnect for me works exactly in this way. Both my phone and computer are on the same wifi, so sharing is simple. Even notifications from one show up on the other.
But then somebody else comes along, brings their laptop and wants to share files with you, and then what?
Syncthing allows you to send them a url! with a keyphrase! These systems are DESIGNED to make sharing easy! Then what? You have a two-sentence exchange, they enter some data, bam, data shared.
That’s not what Thopter said he was using.
https://xkcd.com/2055/ also comes to mind, all the technology is there it just isn’t being used in a sensible way.
I like syncthing to send files between devices in home network. Fairly easy to setup, works cross platform, super fast and quite reliable. For best user experience, I like to have a local server, but p2p works too. When I use my phone as a hotspot, it can even sent to the connected devices, so youcan bring data between devices that never directly connect to each other!
I don’t agree at all. The hard part that regular end users sometimes fail at or struggle with is just knowing what you want to do. They wind up putting things on closed clouds and running into arbitrary roadblocks trying to get them off. But the amazing thing is, they usually don’t even chafe at that restriction! It usually works just fine for them. They don’t even think of it as moving files from one computer to another…their photos are just there, whereever they happen to be.
But if you have opinions about how it should be done, man, it’s never been easier. Android keeps making it harder but i do still run an ssh server on my android phone that lets me backup my photos every morning with rsync running from crontab. I can share files with ftp, http, ssh. I use some NFS between my linux machines. The only one that has gotten worse is SMB…the Android TV SMB client requires some arcane “client min protocol = LANMAN1” that took an hour or two to figure out.
I think there’s a bit of rose-colored glasses going on about the 90s. Ethernet was not so prevalent, and it was much slower.
And there is the problem. I consider myself fairly tech, and understand MOST of the individual pieces you talk about – but for the average person? Forget it man! Does my wife want to configure crontab? Run a ssh server on her phone? No freaking way!
I think what the autor is getting at is that ANYONE can use and understand a floppy disk (or USB stick). Why is it not as easy with all this tecnoggy stuff?
And yes, I also understand the reasons… but likewise, my wife doesn’t.
doesn’t your wife use ‘the cloud’ with far more convenience and simplicity than a floppy disk?
Surprisingly for quick file transfer “send via Bluetooth” work like a charm between many generation of android devices and my Linux laptop.
It’s not super fast though.
When bluetooth is not available I resort to ftp but having to install a server on one side a launch a client on the other side is not what I’d call convenient.
I use Material Files on my android, has a quicktile in menu that straight up launches the setup fpr a ftp server on your phone including optional login for anyone wanting to connect to it.
I have never needed to open any client on my PC, just connect to it over the explorer with the IP:Port from the setup and shabam.
Rlly nice app that i can recommend that I found when searching for a decent one for rooted phones. Ofc works just as good on standard ones ;)
+1 for Material Files. I use it along with being connected to my Wireguard network so I can connect to it from anywhere.
Love the article! I’m always surprised how shitty e.g. BT transfer is. For copying files, at least at home: most wifi routers (even cheap isp-handed-out ones) can play NAS after plugging in an old USB HDD everyone has anyway gathering dust somewhere. Or of course an old PC running your favorite Linux and Samba will do. On Android phones the app “CX file explorer” will happily connect to SMB devices and share files with it, making copying files at least reliable and fast. I guess apple has a similar thing.
I have a router and HDD hooked up like that. It still uses SMB 1, so most operating systems refuse to interact with it unless I download all the network stack for it, which is also a pain to set up and there are the exploits to guard against, but even still, most of the time, it is just impossible to see on the network. I think I’ll probably pull all that stuff off and just reformat the drive for a regular USB backup. its more convenient that way.
i had an iphone able to see my network shares over SMB and wifi up until last week…. then they did an OS update and it no longer connects to SMB..just throws a bunch of different errors.. nothing changed on the network side, just no longer sees shares on windows or linux boxes… its a real PITA…
eventually had to use the apple app and a usb cable (windows phone link crap only works via bluetooth LE.. wont work with standard old bluetooth usb dongle)
This is generally my experience with SMB these days. The exploits ruined the protocol, and we all suffer as a result. SMB was pretty easy back in Windows 98+ era.
Syncthing is magic for this. It just transparently syncs up a directory on Linux, Windows, Macs, Android, macOS, *BSD (Synctrain on iOS). Use it heaps.
The main problem is that I don’t see an official Android client. A long time ago, there was a client on F-Droid, but it was discontinued and removed. I found another wrapper around Syncthing, but it eats the battery. What do you use for Android?
Pairdrop requires no installation, just a common network. If you happen to want to use it on a network not connected to the internet, you’ll need to visit the site before going offline so it can download its webapp-y functions.
This!
https://pairdrop.net/
FTW
This is the right answer. Thank you for playing, everyone else, but now you can go home XD
I wrote a little page that shows a qr code and a link you can copy and share.. Then another person/device can scan the qr code (or browse to the link) which sets up websockets through the server. Then you just click browse and upload the file, it’s sent to the other device which can save or show that file. Server does not need to spend disk capacity on storing the data, it just receives a package from one one socket and forwards it to the other socket.. I won’t be sharing the link because I don’t want to listen to people whine about THEY would never use the tool that I made for my own use out of fear that I might be intercepting their files.
That’s sweet. Maybe we can implement that as a docker container or TrueNAS “app”.
You’re not wrong that things are more annoying than they have to be. That said, as a techie I find that I get by well enough with a few methods:
Windows to/from Linux personal computers – samba share works well enough about 95% of the time. The other 5% it doesn’t want to accept my Win password.
Windows to/from Linux alt method 1 – I have dropbox on both computers. For the cost of upload then then download (instead of direct transfer) I can easily get stuff from one computer to the other
Windows to/from Linux alt method 2 – use PowerShell to SFTP files from Windows to Linux
Android to Linux (1 file) – Kdeconnect
Android to Linux (many files) – connect via USB-C cable and put phone in file transfer mode
Linux to/from Linux (whether other pcs, laptops, or servers) – easiest – just SFTP or use FISH protocol in KDE if I want a GUI
I also use Syncthing but good luck convincing someone else to set that up to receive a file. That’s the point of the article. I’m fine with spending minutes (or hours) setting up a sync because it’s long term. Now do that for your tech-illiterate family member who uses a different OS and just wants some photos.
Android used to have USB mounting but now it’s MTP aka Media Trash Protocol.
Yo another person using syncthing!
Definately a great way to go.
Excellent. You’ll both be able to send files to each other.
Let’s goooooo!
Stopped reading there.
All it takes is to plug the USB-C cable that I always have under my monitor and then select “Android Auto / File sharing” instead of “Just charging” from a menu which pops up on my phone or tablet when it detects it got connected to a PC instead of a charger.
For transfering files between computers there’s a very handy
python -m http.servercommand.But that’s the point – why does it take a cable and multiple steps? They’re already on the same darn network!
Yeah, this is a horrible method and the one I use most often as well. I get why we have that Android menu that keeps USB transfer turned off until you want it, but what a PITA to have to turn on all the time. I don’t like the idea of trying to share files over a hyper-text transfer protocol either. SFTP is better than that.
Except they’re not. During the last **year** my phone had its WiFi enabled for about 30 minutes **total** and that was only because I needed to update map files in OsmAnd app. Mobile data transfer would be slightly longer. It was enabled for like 3-4 hours total because I needed to use browser a couple of times when outside. For the rest of the time it just sat there, idling with no connectivity enabled except for GSM (voice calls, SMS).
Nice ragebait tho. You’ll make a fine replacement for John Elliot V. Just make sure not to post your personal details online like he did ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
Now that iPhones have USB-C ports, I’ve found that they will just go ahead and mount a USB-C flash drive and let you read and write files. For that matter, I’ve even used one of those USB-C multi-function docks to access SD, MicroSD, and wired Ethernet from a phone. They even automatically mirror screen to a USB-C monitor.
Computers, of course, are always happy with USB drives.
So, pretty much…if someone actually longs for the simplicity of the floppy disk era, USB drives are (as they have been for about 25 years) the same experience across most of the platforms you use. Just make sure to get one that has both USB-C and USB-A connectors.
I always carry one of those mini Victorinox knives with me, which contains a USB stick that has both USB-A and USB-C. Great little thing, has all that a gentleman needs. :)
A collection of Czech Casting galleries for when you get lonely?
For a glorious but too-brief time around the turn of the millennium we could make high speed transcontinental NFS mounts, even anonymously. It didn’t matter whether the disk was in the box on the desk in front of you, in the room next door, or in San Francisco, Chicago or Toronto. It was seamless and Just Worked. It made collaborating and sharing with others trivial, because they were all looking at the same disk. Syncing, for many cases, was not necessary, or was even nonsensical.
Then someone poisoned the well, trust went out the window, security got in the drivers seat, and the traffic simply wouldn’t pass any more. It took a long time for equivalent web-based services to fill that gap, and none were as simple and straightforward as a mount. You can still figuratively jump through a series of hoops and do an NFS mount through a secure tunnel, but those are (relatively speaking) considerable frictions to the task.
Now there is a multitude of options for many more use cases, and between many different kinds of devices. This is Good. But sometimes it would be nice to just mount a remote disk without the additional layers of complication.
Today you can do the same thing with sshfs.
Sort of, at first glance. sshfs is FTP in a trench coat, not a real file system.
No, SSHFS is a real filesystem that makes directories visible and usable as any other local directory is.
Maybe you want SFTP which is functionally similar to SSHFS but rather than providing you with a file system, you get an FTP-like client that’s running over SSH.
I use MiX (free and paid, I use paid) app on my android phone, added a SMB to my windows PC on my local network and I can just copy/paste files to/from where ever I want. Works for me. I use it on my tablet as well. I hate connecting USB-C wires to my devices, gets in the way, transfers are often interrupted or slow to a crawl etc. With MiX I use wireless connection and copies images, documents etc in seconds.
And it’s a nice file manager for opening files instead of opening a viewer then opening files. Or installing apps from downloads.
I use telegram to move files between linux-android-iphone-windows-macintosh.
It worked flawlessly int the past 5 or 6 years, never a failure.
what is the proper linux approach to file sharing? i know ive used samba before but almost everyone will tell you its insecure. in my last attemt to switch to debian, file sharing with samba was a real pain point. especially when i wanted certain shares permanently mounted.
The “proper” unix way?
ncorncat!ncat -l 12345 > new_filenameon the receiver andncat receiver.ip.address 12345 < orig_filenameon the sender. User friendly. (For some flavor of user.)Serious answer though. For big files, I actually do use an sftp client on the phone, sshd on the desktop. Or ADB and a USB cable.
What’s still missing is deeper integration. Like, how many times do I want to copy a long password string or URL off of the computer and paste it into a window on the cellphone? This shouldn’t be impossible.
I lamented this in 2002 I believe, and whipped up a little clipboard website using PHP, in the server in my closet. All it had to do was take whatever was in a text box and save it to a flat file, then display that file below the text box. These days you could easily do it on a $3 wifi microcontroller.
Wouldn’t the “proper” way to do it on Linux be SCP?
Your Linux target will be running SSH right?
SCP establishes an SSH session and then pushes a file directly to the other machine’s file system over that channel without having to run a file server or set up anything to receive files or streams or anything.
No, you could not share floppies that easy since various operating systems used various file systems.
Don’t talk BS.
Some even needed special floppy drives for their floppies.
i dont think i had an issue moving files between early macs (pre i-mac) and my home pc in high school. one or the other seemed to have a translation layer (probibly on the mac side) and i didnt have to install anything special. software didnt work, but i could always download mac software at home and take it to class. i made heavy use of spanned archives too, so i could store quite a bit in the dozen or so floppies i used to carry around.
You’re talking about the edge cases, and the article is about the majority of cases. Don’t pretend everyone was juggling OSes back then.
Time to bring back Timex Datalink: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timex_Datalink
Bring back Laplink while we’re at it.
I hate to be ‘that guy’, but the fact that you started with the “share…” button is the biggest indicator of the “problem”.
Moving files between devices is exactly as easy or likely easier than it has ever been.
The “problem” is when you think of the device as an appliance instead of a computer with a file system that lives on a storage device.
The solution is trivially simple for any combination of devices.
Push the file from where it lives on your file system to a network share.
Or, set up a share on your device and pull it to the other device. There are plenty of apps that will let you do it in any flavor of instant server the receiving device needs from webdav to tftp to a wifi hotspot hosting a web portal.
The “problem” is users not knowing, or wanting to know ‘where the files live’ and relying on the ‘share… ‘ button.
A problem created only by going out of their way not to use the solution that everyone else uses. Cloud sharing. I take a photo on my phone, the JPG is already available to view on my laptop automatically with no hoops to jump through at all.
And that also answers your question as to why direct sharing is not quite so straight forward. Because no one is motivated to make it simpler when there is already an existing easy way of doing it.
Airdrop works fine as long as you’ve got Apple devices
Apple’s files does this. Unless I explicitly put them elsewhere, All my files are in either iCloud or my local NAS, and accessible on all my devices (including windows, for the ones on my NAS). You can I assume do the same with Google drive, OneDrive, etc; the storage provider integrates straight into the iPhone files app and Mac finder, giving a seamless experience to grab files from anywhere. Even windows has support for on-demand sync now, though it’s not as seamless.
iCloud (shudder)
Google Drive (shudder)
One Drive (OMG! Dies)
Seriously. Can you imagine having to pay a subscription for drive space? Insanity. Everyone I know who uses Macs pays for stupid stuff you can do for free if you just don’t limit yourself to a walled garden designed to extract money from your wallet.
KDE Connect makes it really easy to transfer files between my phone and PC.
For transferring files between my PCs, I just use SFTP. It’s built in to most file managers in Linux. It works great over the local network and can be used over the internet as long as you harden your SSH config.
I’ve always wondered, why don’t computers just come with link cables? Like, where you could just plug two computers together over USB or something. It worked for Pokemon 30 years ago, why haven’t computer manufacturers caught on?
Ah, that’s called Ethernet. Most computers have the port built in. You can connect with a single cable, or you can use a “hub” called a “router” or a “switch” (not the Nintendo kind) to transfer files. The problem is, every OS tries to reinvent the network stack, so we get articles like this one. ;)
tailscale taildrive ssh ssfs nostr etc. this is all you need to implement a distributed file system over heterogeneous devices.
My phone and computer are surprisingly well linked. I can access the file system on the phone from windows, copy and paste over the devices, and even screen mirror each other
On the Android side of things, apparently the latest update from Samsung (yet to hit my phone, any day now) will support Apple airdrop, so the tech giants DO seem to at least be glancing at each other..
Someone should invent a platform independent protocol. You know, for transferring files.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_file_transfer_protocols
“Once upon a time, computing was simple. You had files on a floppy disk. ….”
A 5.25″ or a 3.5″, or do you mean a Spectrum/Amstrad 3.0″? What density / format? Is it a “good” disk – you know, some of them were flaky in certain drives, OK in others…
I don’t miss those days!
Yeah, computing is simple if you’ve got everything on the same platform. Seems the only way files could be transferred across different platform types back in the day would be through a modem or direct serial connection. Even with a simple text file though, it’s possible you’d still have to convert between ASCII and some other text/CRLF standard. Transferring between PC, Mac, C64, *nix comes to mind.
” It’s not just because Big Tech is full of mean people that want to make life worse than it used to be, but it can feel that way sometimes.”
Well no, but add that they’re greedy and that explains more than the rest. They’ve made many of the decisions they did in attempts to lock people into particular eco-systems with legal plausible deniability that that is not what they were doing at all.
Still just putting SMB file sharing on works just fine and its not difficult to find apps that use it from any o.s.
SMB servers on android are a bit of a problem. On f-droid I found only one and it was very insecure. On google play, there were more, but ether limited to so slow speeds to be useless, or required to pay to install (no free version).
SMB clients on android are much better, but requires using user interface on the phone.
I’m sure I’ll get all sorts of hate from saying this, but I’ve been using Onedrive for over 15 years. I don’t leave on my devices unless I’m using them so a cloud solution works for me. All my devices support it and as long as I have a connection, it stores the file(s) and makes them available for whatever device I need them on. I can take a photo or scan on my iPhone and it becomes available on my Windows PC. Where I have more drive space, I keep a local copy of all the files. Did this with Google drive long ago, but needed more space and it’s worth the pittance that I pay to have someone else maintain that cloud drive for me. I generally dislike all things Microsoft, and I don’t use their cloud apps, but I’m not sure where I could get the cloud drive space anywhere else for as cheap.
I started a browser-based project to xfer files via audio (or qr code) that works across the air gap.
https://github.com/MarquisdeGeek/KansasAirgap
Someone might find it a good starting point.
Getting files from device to device? Really?
Half the time I can’t get files from app to app on the same device!
I’ve been using my Android phone with a docking station as a laptop for several years now. I’d say the “year of convergence” had just about arrived when I started but every damn update since has only taken that further away.
My last fight with it… just trying to edit an svg. I wanted to use Inkscape via the “Inky” app. I also installed some actual Android-native apps. They all sucked. I downloaded the file I wanted to edit via the browser. It gives me no choice, it goes into the “Download” folder. Now one would think that folder would be accessible everywhere right? Nope! Either Google or Samsung… don’t know which buy they will not allow that.
I had to create a subdirectory inside of Downloads, download into downloads, move the downloaded file into the subdirectory via the file manager (hey, why does that app get access to downloads when none of my others do?) then… after about 1,000 security click-throughs that claim to have a ‘remember this decision’ button or something like that but most certainly it does not function… finally I could get my svg in Inky (Inkscape). The other, native Android apps I tried… I never could get access to my downloaded svgs. I guess with those you are expected to just start every SVG from scratch and then the only thing you use it for is to view it back in that same app?
I’m about done with Android. I could try a Linux phone… but I am afraid not all the features will work with my carrier and the hardware specs are all lower. Maybe it would be ok.. but I have to buy one to find out. Or I could go back to using a laptop. But then I still need to buy an expensive phone to get one that is unlocked so I can tether.
I hate these corporations so much!
Don’t know why you are not able to access the downloads folder on your Samsung phone. I daily access the downloads folder from Android apps on my Samsung phone and Samsung tablet. This includes, off the top of my head, AlreaderX, Moon Reader Pro, Readera, Samsung pdf reader, Writer+ (markdown editor), and more.
Possibly you have bollixed something up in your settings.
I wish I knew a clean way to mount remote filesystems on my Android phone and get other apps to use them properly.
I like to add “Gmail Draft Messages” to the list…
After 6 different methods i settled down with KDE Connect over wifi 5. I can finally say it “just works”. My phone storage can’t even keep up with the 500Mbps link! Havent plugged a cable for data since last year.
Magic wormhole is wonderful for the occasional file transfer. There are mobile apps that implement the protocol as well.
“You could alternatively try sending them via Bluetooth, but you’ll have to go through the hassle of pairing, which almost never works first time”
Unless you are on iphone – than you can’t do it by design.
uuencode
is simple
KDE Connect does the job for me.
Rustdesk is great as file transfer utility and croc is tiny and simple.
One of my solutions to this problem is the use of a web-based clipboard, one I built myself that also permits me to upload files. It is particularly handy for Remote Desktop where the clipboard has been disbled (as if that really improves security, LOL). It’s open source, and if you hate bloated JS frameworks but don’t hate PHP you might find it useful.
https://github.com/judasgutenberg/webclipboard_2
I mostly use note to self in signal. Works on all my devices with pretty big files.
https://xkcd.com/2055/
There is always (at least) one.
Android and Windows, never had a problem, just hook them together with a USB cable.