If you want a easy, reliable and cross-platform way to share files between computers, phones, etc, it may be of your interest.
I like LocalSend, much easier than KDEConnect, and also on F-Droid. But I have to confess that I usually send photos via Signal on mobile to myself and then open Signal app on the desktop to download it.
I even do that with links because syncing tabs between Firefox instances is so unreliable for me.
I have been using it for the last ~6 months and found it to be very useful and easy to use. Transferring stuff between Android phones, Windows 10 & 11 PCs and a Steam Deck (i.e. Linux PC) has been a breeze.
I installed it and immediately felt like it was one of those apps I’d been waiting for my whole life.
I’d use pairdrop over this so I don’t need to install it on all my devices.
I stopped using pairdrop/snapdrop because it doesn’t work on native wayland chrome/chromium due to webrtc.
Another reason to use Firefox?
It’s about webrtc, which the support on Firefox is even more poor.
I kid you not, I was actually looking for a solution like that yesterday! hopefully it’ll handle a few tens of gigabytes between my two Linux laptops.
This is one file at a time. It’s designed more for very quick “Oops I need that photo” sort of stuff.
What you want to do is better served by NFS, SMB or SFTP.
Or Syncthing if they want to sync gb’s of files between computers.
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When we are talking terabytes of data there are faster ways for the initial sync job.
I would just use rsync/sftp/robocopy or similar for that first copy for faster transfers, then setup Syncthing on those shares for delta syncs.
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Yep, with ST I can trust the files will get there. For large folders I just occasionally check on them.
NFS, SMB or SFTP
ugh.
Am I allowed to think it’s weird the entire open source community can’t compete with SMB?
SMB is a protocol that can be used with Samba software in Linux since many years, so there is no need to compete I figure. Depending on the use case, I like to use rsync for copying files across.
It does actually support several files, folders, or anything.
Use Syncthing.
Works a breeze, does require an install on the devices, but man it just works.
Seem to be quite a few of these types of apps, I’ve been using landrop recently, how does this one compare?
I have not used Landrop but looking at it from the outside, Landrop is version 0.4 and has received no development for 3 years now. LocalSend is past 1.0 and still in active development. I’d rather use LocalSend then instead of something abandoned before it was deemed complete.
Thanks, this tends to be functionality I dont need that often but when I do it’s frustratingly difficult finding something that doesnt feel like it’s going to need me to sign over my soul so it’s good to know about other open source solutions.
I was using landrop before. Works fine but the GUI was just a bit off, not intuitive enough. That’s Localsend’s biggest improvement IMO.
You also can send the files between a laptop and a phone just by connecting to the phone hotspot. (At least with Linux)
