My problem is that all these alternatives require the devices to be on the same local network.
One beauty of Airdrop is that it creates and handles that local network automatically under the hood (as far as I understand). So you could be out on a hike with friends and Airdrop something.
The workaround I've found after switching to an Android device has been to teather my connection to my friend's device, which ends up creating a LAN that Localsend can work through, but this is not as nice an experience.
Creates QR codes for each device to scan for webrtc. Android to android will do an audible chirp that lets the devices know to switch from qr code mode to opening the camera to scan each others codes. Tested android to apple and working, the audio chirp doesn't get caught by apple. Just wait and eventually the qr code will dissolve to allow scanning step.
Just threw this together. I was playing with audio handshake using bird-like chirp "songs" or old school modem between smartphones. Fun putting phones together as they send audio frames and confirm to start transfer, but unreliable and slow to handshake. I would like to cleanup the flow to improve. I've started using it for sending files between iphone/android/pc without having to deal with apps, emails, accounts, etc. blah.
This is using webrtc and speeds are slower than a physical USB I get 3-4MB/s instead of local network speed of 30MB/s due to browser browser implementation bottlenecks. I needed fast local network sharing of files over 5GB and tried a lot of approaches and speed doesn't budge more than 6-7MB/s .
Also you don't even need a server atleast for now in chrome webrtc transfer can work over a file:// in firefox it doesn't. For signaling you could even use free peerjs tunnel or other when user is connected to internet and otherwise fallback to this QR or offer code sharing. This will become so useful if browsers eliminate those bottlenecks.
also even in localsend speeds are limited usually to my internet speed for some reason.
Whenever I need to use something like this it's because the device isn't mine, which makes this so much better than an app. Would be cool if there was a text message option, and a bit of server so the second scan wouldn't be required. Pretty funny how simple the concept is though.
Doesn't seem to work for sending files from my Mac to my Android - I scan the code on the phone and....nothing happens? I tried sending via FF/Safari/Brave and receiving on FF/DDG. No idea what am I doing wrong.
Airdrop is also pretty weird: sometimes it can’t find other phones (probably when a previous transfer failed silently in the background). Also, it had some issues searching for contacts when there was no mobile/Wi-Fi connection (tried to send photos to another phone in the mountains). Sometimes it could just freeze and not work… Apple magic here isn’t really useful.
Right, the first two steps are what make AirDrop, "AirDrop". This isn't an alternative at all if it requires both devices to already be connected to the same WiFi.
AirDrop is fantastic for sharing files with people you don't know/just met - if we have to find and agree to join the same wifi before we interact we are no longer talking about the same feature.
If Apple's AirDrop implementation had required people to join the same WiFi first, the feature would never have taken off the way it has among non-techy users. I'm still today mildly surprised I can use AirDrop as a verb in conversation and most of the time the other party knows what I mean.
This. Localsend may be very useful for a set of devices you control or influence. The USP of Airdrop is ad hoc sharing with people you don't really know. Classic case is meeting strangers on holiday and you want to swap some photos of the trip you're on. One or both of you doesn't have data or time to install anything, or it's just too hard to persuade someone they should install random app. Pairing Bluetooth or setting up local networks is way too convoluted and time consuming.
With Airdrop you have trivially easy, "just works" sharing with people in proximity. It works great between iPhones and Pixel phones now they support it. It just needs support to spread to more Android devices.
> With Airdrop you have trivially easy, "just works" sharing with people in proximity.
Funny enough, I encounter so many problems trying to share things via AirDrop with friends, family, and even my own Apple devices that I just tell everyone to install LocalSend and I find that things work better.
I’m not sure why that is, because AirDrop used to work pretty well for me. But it’s been an exercise in frustration more often than not for me.
(Obviously, LocalSend works only as long as everyone is on the same network.)
I've found it very often falls back to sending over your internet connection even if your cell reception sucks. No idea why. People on a previous HN thread talked about solutions
The real choice though is between (a) buying an apple gizmo and not having to set up local networks; and (b) buying a non-apple gizmo and having to do that.
True. But I mean these are photos (from strangers that you aren’t even willing to exchange phone numbers with?). It is a really non-essential feature anyway, so most likely everybody who doesn’t have an Apple device skips it.
Not only that, but with iOS 17.1 or later, AirDrop transfers will continue to work if you go out of Wi-Fi range during the transfer. It seamlessly switches to an Internet-based relay.
Which, in my view, significantly decreases the value proposition, as there is no way to deactivate this feature to my knowledge (at least not without also opting out of other useful features under the "Handoff" umbrella).
A typical Apple feature, dreamed up by engineers that are presumably not aware of the existence of metered data plans...
Settings > General > AirDrop > turn off Use Cellular Data
That said, I don’t really see why you would disable that. It’s only a backup method for when the peer-to-peer connection fails. Unless you are sending huge files on a regular basis, I wouldn’t expect it to be worth disabling. Also, most metered plans I’ve encountered just cause your connection to be very slow after you hit the data cap.
If you are on a plan that automatically charges you excessive overage fees without warning and there is no other choice, then my condolences.
Speaking of ad-hoc communication channels that do not require shared infrastructure: I like the idea of https://github.com/divan/txqr which sends data using animated QR codes. An ultimate guarantee of physical proximity. The bandwidth is not comparable to WiFi 6, of course, but no OS support is required.
The better example for colored QRs is https://jabcode.org/ by by Fraunhofer Institute for Secure Information Technology. It is more recent and actively maintained.
With Linux it's very easy as long as you're okay going offline - just make an ad hoc wifi network, have the other device connect to it, then you can do whatever (Localsend, host a local webserver on the linux machine, whatever.)
I don’t think this article is actually accurate. It seems like Google just reverse engineered airdrop rather than Apple changing the tech they use. Because quickshare works with all airdrop devices now. Not just ones recently updated.
it's widely expected Apple will find some way to lock it out
I suppose that is "widely expected" from the usual group of anti-Apple internet griefers looking for a reason to moan in public, rather than actually doing some research or knowing things.
To quote a sibling comment:
"Apple contributed the core logic to the Wi-Fi Alliance to build Wi-Fi Aware, which they now also support."
Not generally, I just don't have that specific phone that has implemented the workaround, and so this isn't a solution for me.
Apple has consistently done everything it can to self-sabotage their implementations of stuff to comply with EU anti-trust legislation like the stuff with digital marketplaces, so I'm not holding my breath on this.
Iroh is a relay protocol for peer to peer transfers over the Internet so it doesn't have this problem, check out my other comment here about wrappers around the protocol for sending files, Sendme is the one I use.
Iroh's protocol can figure out if the devices are on the same LAN and avoid going over the internet. It can work without a discovery server too -- i.e. completely LAN.
Bluetooth is also very slow. Airdrop and Localsend achieve speed by using local wifi networks. The problem with Localsend is that the user themselves need to manage the creation of the local network.
Airdrop has not felt reliable to me all the time, and completely fails on anything larger than a picture or short video. Especially if you are storing your files on iCloud and the pictures and videos don't live on your phone.
Been using Localsend to transfer bigger files between phone / laptops, never fails or has trouble finding a device, or stalling.
> The workaround I've found after switching to an Android device has been to teather my connection to my friend's device, which ends up creating a LAN that Localsend can work through, but this is not as nice an experience.
I've recently started using blip, which works very similarly to airdrop after the initial pairing has happened. The devices do not need to be on the same network etc.
I'm honestly surprised that WiFi Hotspot doesn't isolate hosts, after companies like Meta have been caught running servers inside their apps and connecting to those to track users.
I was too when due to network problems at our last traditional LAN-party (WC3, CS1.6 etc.) we used the hotspot feature of one phone to get everyone on a local network. I was skeptical and assumed the PCs wouldnt be able to see each other but lo and behold: it worked flawlessly!
Yes exactly, that's why another RCE which will be found in Airdrop, if found by bad actor. Will be pretty fun to watch.
Last RCE in Airdrop, could be made into worm, it was found by whitehat, luckily for Apple there are still people, which are willing report exploits for little money, so billionaires can enjoy their life on yachts.
Is this working seamlessly? Iirc you needed to switch settings to bypass the contacts only thing. Plus Apple can of course create more adversarial hurdles to lock other vendors out.
And, of course this only solves the phone - phone, and not even all of them. Desktops & laptops have less hope.
>It uses a time-sliced channel-hopping mechanism so the radio can serve both infrastructure WiFi and the direct peer link simultaneously.
This seems like such a basic solution that I'm surprised that it isn't required by any of the mainstream standards before WiFi Aware. I wonder if this was some sort of a patent issue or similar.
It is entirely possible to inject (unrelated) wifi frames while being associated to a BSS without violating the existing 802.11 standards. That’s why Apple is able to implement AWDL on standard compliant wifi hardware.
However the path towards this type of interoperability would likely go through additional standardization via IEEE 802.11* and the Wi-Fi alliance. At which point Apple will need to implement and support the new standards. There is no need to reverse engineer AWDL to meet the new European interoperability requirements.
What is needed is for wifi chipset OEMs to implement such standardization.
Something pretty routine of them.
It can be expected that Apple will also maintain the proprietary AWDL in order to support their legacy devices.
AFAIK, Wi-Fi Aware / Neighbourhood Aware Networking is basically the "standardised" version of AirDrop, and as of 2025, iOS's Airdrop transparently inter-operates with it.
AWDL is such an amazing technology, it's understandable that Apple wants to keep it only for their devices as it gives them a noticeable advantage for quick stuff sharing.
Google's QuickShare contains a reverse-engineered AWDL implementation that works on Pixel and a few other phones.
As for WiFi NAN: support for it seems rather limited outside of iOS and Android. From what I can tell the feature is barely tested on Linux and I can't find any generic Windows APIs for it either.
Researched this for a bit: there is some hardware for PCI supporting it, but Windows 10/11 not, and Linux is still work in progress, so no real support on OS level, only for some iOS/Android devices.
I've definitely used STA and AP modes concurrently on my Windows laptop with the operating system's built-in internet connection sharing function to help troubleshoot a problem in the field.
That was around a decade ago. It didn't take any extra effort on my part; I just told it to do the thing, and then it did that thing.
it might be interesting to use unused or extra wifi cards to support this. My pc motherboard has both wifi and ethernet and I only use the ethernet. That card does absolutely nothing at all.
We have been using AWDL intensely (not via AirDrop but Network.framework) for 6+ years and it fails less than 5% of the time. It's pretty impressive for a non-connected link between devices. The most common problems we face are very high device density places (100+ device in 30sqm space) and device wandering out of reach quickly (sometime as low as 5m).
> which is a proprietary peer-to-peer layer that runs alongside your existing WiFi connection without dropping it. It uses a time-sliced channel-hopping mechanism so the radio can serve both infrastructure WiFi and the direct peer link simultaneously.
Maybe a network nerd can chime in - is this implementation so difficult that it's unrealistic we'll see an OSS version?
I think the thing that makes an OSS implementation more difficult than iOS/macOS is the friction involved.
Say you've got an android phone, windows PC, and a linux box, and you want to be able to quickly drop files from each one. unless we get some kind of cooperation across all three platforms at the OS level, you'd at minimum need to install some kind of client into each system - when the nicest feature of airdrop is that it's baked into all of Apple's OSs, in my opinion. even if it worked exactly the same way, but had to be installed, I think it would see less use - and there's no real way for a single OSS project to do that across multiple OS platforms, to my knowledge
The physical layer part really isn't complicated, and most Wi-Fi chipsets have supported something like it for over a decade now.
What's tricky is to specify and get everybody to implement the layers on top of it, including device discovery (frequently offloaded to Bluetooth for efficiency reasons), user identification (Apple runs a PKI for this) etc.
There is an open standard for that which is included in Apple devices since the iPhone 15. google implements it since the pixel 3. It’s called NAN. There are no WiFi cards available for consumers to buy which expose that as part of their firmware sadly. But wpa_supplicant has implemented part of the standard.
This is misinformation, including most of the comments here, the majority of phones from 2014 support Wi-Fi Direct, and simultaneous group and station mode (2 BSS, yes even different channels). Even most Wi-Fi chips generally not just smartphones for a very long time. They stay connected to your home network.
When Quickshare drops your Wi-Fi connection, its not Direct anymore, that's just soft AP from an error, and if that doesn't work, it fallback to Bluetooth. Bluetooth is used for provisioning as well.
The only reason why many apps don't use it is because of buggy implementation, some phones require a full restart after using Wi-Fi Direct to fix connectivity issues, even Motorola's own product line with Smart Connect use it only with certain models, despite having Wi-Fi direct due to poor implementation (can be forced).
They even have a white list of supported adapter for the Windows app since direct is used as well, can be unofficially force enabled for Mediatek based adapters (rare on some laptops).
Back in 2016 things were much stable on Android phones with Wi-Fi Direct, even with old Blackberry, there were many apps including file managers that used it before it was essentially dropped, even for onboarding/provisioning apps like HP printers...
Apple's Airdrop success is about gaining traction, in the era of Wi-Fi Direct or other methods, most people were not aware of such features, as it required an app to be installed, they used email/messaging, even when Airdrop was first introduced and preinstalled, it took years for the average person to use it.
> It uses a time-sliced channel-hopping mechanism so the radio can serve both infrastructure WiFi and the direct peer link simultaneously.
This is really nothing special as 802.11 implementations go, as it's pretty easy to do as long as you can control the physical channel for at least one side.
Many Windows, Linux, and Android devices have been supporthing this for years. It's usually called something like "simultaneous AP/STA mode".
No you didn't miss. I mixed the concept, UDP broadcast similar to mDNS, yes part of net library. actual mDNS like visible in Finder and actual RFC implementation not part of standard library. What I was trying to say was easy to make "mdns-ish" with just standard lib, rush typed it and ended up like that.
Recently started using it, it works really well and it's much more reliable than AirDrop. But the UX could be improved.
But I just wish Apple fixed AirDrop, every time I go to use I have so little confidence in it, it often doesn't see devices or if you have multiple Mac users it will confuse them, showing you the same Mac device twice without telling you which user it is
I'm curious, what do you people use this for? What are all these (presumably large) files that you guys are generating and transferring, that requires the use of apps like these?
Like in my case, the only files I generate on my phone are photos and videos, and these get backed up by Immich, which I can then share with someone by sending them a link to the files/album in question. I imagine normal folks would use iCloud or Google Photos for the same task.
For syncing other files like documents and such, I use ownCloud OCIS, and I'd imagine most other folks would use something like DropBox or iCloud, or even just email or WhatsApp the files.
For local network transfers of say ISOs or something, I'd just copy them over SMB, which is pretty much universal and doesn't need any special app. Or even just plug in a hard drive, if I'm doing backups.
Sending plain text from one device to another. I was debugging my steamdeck and I send code snippet from desktop chatgpt to steamdeck using Localsend to run. Then I send the debug output (also plaintext) back to desktop to ask chatgpt what to try next. Other than this, random small files from time to time. The app is lightweight and just works.
I use it for moving SSH keys, VPN configs, and .env files between my laptop and a work machine. Obviously don't want that sitting in dropbox, pasted into Slack, etc. Localsend on the same network, gone in two seconds no account and no history. Easier than spinning up scp every time.
For me, video is the main one. Sizes from 100MB - 3GB. Getting videos from an Apple device to an Android is a pain in the ass because I need to 2FA log in or click through something relatively convoluted (Dropbox, GDrive) or deal with pulling out some hardware I use once every 100 years (external drives). Localsend is a 2 or 3 click operation and very robust.
I only use it for sending a bunch of photos that wouldn't go so well over iMessage, usually on vacation. And sometimes that vacation involves not having cell service. Otherwise I'll usually message a single photo to someone because AirDrop is finicky.
Silly apple. They should remove airdrop and tell users they have to rely on an internet connection and use whatsapp or email for quick, one-off file transfers between their iphones and macbooks.
Yup, for me I can see the device but when I try to initiate a send it just doesn't show up on the other device about half the time. I've not found a reliable way to fix it either, toggling AirDrop on and off on both devices seems the best way to fix it but only works like 70% of the time.
Look into Sendme [0] and AltSendme [1] (which is a GUI around the former), they use Iroh [2] which is an open-source encrypted peer-to-peer relay service to send data so there are no limits whatsoever for sending and receiving files, because there's no central server.
From my earlier comment about a similar thread a couple days ago about which file sharing apps people use [3]:
This kind of services that requires the user to share a seed/code to the recipient always seems kinda awkward to me. The code is not simple/short enough to be verbally communicated; If I can send the code, I usually can just send the file.
Not necessarily. For example I might have a few gigs of photos to send someone, and I want to send them uncompressed. I could text someone the seed or QR code for them to download the photos, but I can't send those photos (especially uncompressed, even if over RCS or WhatsApp) over text.
Wouldn’t this use your internet data, though? Isn’t the point of these tools to send locally without being limited by internet speeds and without having to use your mobile data?
I'll need to give this a shot. I have Localsend installed for sending thing between my iPhone and Linux desktop, but it doesn't always play nice. Even with the Localsend port open in Firewalld it can take upwards of 10 minutes for the devices to see each other. A browser solution should at least have faster discovery.
I can't get it to work on my end. Tried sending/receiving with Firefox, Chrome, mobile phone, a laptop.
Got this in the console: `WebRTC: ICE failed, add a TURN server and see about:webrtc for more details.` Not sure how to troubleshoot this. Most of the suggestions I found are for the devs not users.
EDIT: Ok, figured it out. It works if I disable Tailscale.
Very interesting. With the "virtual folders" feature, doesn't this also compete with Syncthing kind of? I have actually been looking for a solution like Syncthing, where I can write and cache files offline without actually having all the files in the full synced folder on every device (just my NAS). Kind of a hybrid between a remote filesystem mount and full-on folder sync.
I made websend to make it easier and secure to send images from phones to computers. It also allows automatically OCRing and cropping etc to turn a bunch of pictures into a proper pdf when there's no flatbed scanner around.
The F1TV app is not available in my country on play store on my Google TV. The first time, I logged into the device using the android debugger to install the APK - I didn't want to use an ad-full app. Then I tried LocalSend, and it is now my default to send the APK from my mac to my android tv. Love the simple experience. Minor quirks in the UI, but gets the job done.
LocalSend is the best app to transfer files from mobile to computer wireless that I have fund.
But it has one really big weakness/bug. When you transfer a file and it get interrupted, the half written file on the receiving end is not removed and you get an corrupted file. If you dont notice it, it could look like al files are transfered, but they are not. This is really bad, it is not how files should be "copied/transfered".
I use it on all my devices and tbh it's the absolute best option I found.
Previously I was using syncthing or had to install ftp server, used wormhole after packing all my files into one, etc. Android QuickShare never worked for me (wouldn't help me much with sending to the pc either).
It has some rough edges (ie: on multi-homed devices it's less that ideal to see the one octet that matters, when the list is very long scrolling whilst sending will cause the process to crap out), but other than that it's always reliable.
One of the most convenient aspects of Air Drop for me is that it selects the fastest available connection between the devices and ability to work without both devices being on the same network.
I tried on three phones, two of which are using the same account, I'm reasonably confident I am technically competent to not make silly mistakes, though the best I've achieved was endless wait.
I had better success with IR and BT file transfers. Hell, even spinning a local http server (with python -m http.server) works better than quick share.
The closest I found to AirDrops ease of use is Blip https://blip.net/. Works like charm, supported on pretty much all platforms, works on local and non-local networks (P2P) and has no file size limit. I was pretty surprised it's free for personal use.
Seems like Localsend doesn't currently work reliably with Tailscale enabled. This is a bummer. Hope they also allow sending files between clients on the same tailnet, that'll be super neat.
Unfortunately I can't use it in my office. Because for some reason the network there is designed in the way one computer can't see another even if there're on the same wifi. So basically if I setup a server on pc#1, I can't open pc#1.ip:port on pc#2. As a result Localsend doesn't work
I like kde connect, but find it randomly breaks every month or so and for the life of me cannot figure out why. A week or so later it starts working again.
No. It is using a central “well known server” and requires internet.
Test:
* Does it work in an airplane?
* Does it work in a submarine?
* Does it work in the mountains, when a thunderstorm is approach and you need to share the GPX?
Basically my Garmin Edge and iPhone can do this. Magic-Wormhole fails in all test cases.
Implementation shall be able to negoiate a connection locally (e.g. Bluetooth) and upgrade to peer-to-peer WiFi if need (Garmin doesn’t need that part, GPX are usually smaller than 1024 KB).
Modifications can be made to do that minimal peer exchange over BT. They may already exist, but I haven't used that part yet.
It seems like a lot of extra work to reinvent the wheel and get the security wrong instead of extending a well established protocol with many other tools built on top of it.
This has been on my mind a lot as AirDrop has continuously failed to find devices on my network (no VPN enabled on either device, no weird routing or tunneling, even after flushing networking stuff).
Just set this up in a few minutes and it works a peach (quite fast, too). Just nudged me a little closer toward a "just use Linux" default.
I'm retired now, but love seeing the new generation tackle age old problems. I built something similar to this (albeit, close sourced) about 12 years ago. It was called "bullet" and was aimed at transferring text based content using a custom stickies app.
This application supports the following platforms: Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, iOS, and FireOS. I was surprised. It is very interesting that it is implemented using a combination of REST API, HTTPS encryption, and local networking.
came with omarchy pre installed, usedd it ever since. bonus points for it being open source too.
i was surprised it is written in flutter. looking at how mutli-platform it is, flutter was the more appealing choice.
I love this software for its reliability (as compared to, say, KDE Connect, which I gave up on after years of frustrated use after it became clear that the developers did not believe there was an issue and it would never improve).
I do not love that it is a heavy electron app that takes many seconds to launch on my mid-spec machine and burns 20% of an entire CPU core the entire time it is running.
Why can't we have a simple command line tool that works?
For years I have been syncing with great success using the most basic FOSS tools: `rsync` over `sshfs` on desktop, and SSHD (via an app called Dropbear available on F-Droid) on mobile, using an ad-hoc network over the wifi hotspot (which is turned on by Macrodroid - alas not FOSS - when the device is plugged in). This setup is rock-solid reliable and very fast.
They have web app but had terrible experience with it (can't find devices when you are using the mobile app and the other device is using the web app).
I'm using it, it's great and interoperable. Win - Mac, Mac - android, whatever is your wish. Any combination. However on Mac it prevents the laptop from sleep for some reason
I would be curious how this behaves on messy home and office networks with client isolation, captive portals, and flaky multicast. That is usually where these otherwise elegant tools either earn trust or quietly fall apart.
I love this app, it's on all my devices, it's also written in my favourite cross platform development framework (dart/flutter). Very useful app, with a massive advantage of airdrop, no need for apple. Irrespective of if it's a drop in replacement.
I use local send when KDE connect isn’t working for me. The big problem with these is that you basically have to spend a minute or two setting up both devices to send.
I end up just opening a web server in termux on my phone and having the other side download from my hotspot every time i want to transfer a file because all the other android solutions really really suck.
It's not even close to the speed AirDrop has. This is not an alternative to AirDrop. I tried it multiple times but it's slow every time. These alternatives don't use the same technology.
It is an alternative. It just doesn't fulfill all the needs Airdrop does. I've had situation where I want to share a photo or a text file and it'll work great in that scenario.
So what? Anyway the more important difference is it requires both computers to be on the same LAN. The main point of AirDrop is you can share between two devices with or without LAN, with or without internet.
This works great for me to transfer stuff between my own devices in my home, but it's not an AirDrop replacement at all, so I don't know why they advertise it like that.
Localsend is awesome! My team and I use it all the time for safely transmitting vpn configs, ssh keys, etc... It works flawlessly. The auto-generated names are pretty fun too.
I'd love this to work but I always had trouble making it work on my google tv.
Wanted to share files (~2 gb files) from my Mac to my TV but the transfer kept failing
End-to-end encrypted, no need to be on the same LAN, upload/download auto-resume, real-time transfers (start downloading before upload finishes), really fast (10 Gbps link, smart chunking).
Also zero-knowledge logins (via OPAQUE), passkey/2FA support, no AI training now or ever, GDPR compatible. 2 GB transfers are free.
Blip definitely has a better UX and it's nice that it can transfer between networks through their servers (obviously don't be sending sensitive stuff cause who knows how much they can be trusted)
But I consider my usage of it to be on borrowed time cause there's no way they're gonna let everyone forever beam unlimited data through their servers forever. They're accumulating users before they make you pay, it's just a matter of time. But I'm enjoying it while I can.
To send files locally why not set up a wifi hotspot?
Then you can transfer files to and from uncool people with Android or Linux phones/computers using localsend.
I've never found this difficult and often use hotspots when I'm overseas - it's cheaper to get internet for one phone and share it with the others for example.
It’s not as slick as AirDrop and you have to sort of “prep“ both devices whenever you want to send/receive anything, it’s never just ready to go, but it’s incredibly reliable and will move anything from one machine to another. Just having that consistency across literally any device is so nice.
Because none of them actually match the capabilities of AirDrop, since they essentially require controlling the full stack (UI, low-level networking including Bluetooth for discoverability, Wi-Fi peer to peer connections without dropping any existing infrastructure connection etc.)
Many have tried, I don't think anyone has succeeded.
Supposedly the EU interoperability mandate will make this possible going forward, though? (The tricky part is usually not getting your device to speak some protocol, but to get Apple devices to actually respond to your attempts.)
My problem is that all these alternatives require the devices to be on the same local network.
One beauty of Airdrop is that it creates and handles that local network automatically under the hood (as far as I understand). So you could be out on a hike with friends and Airdrop something.
The workaround I've found after switching to an Android device has been to teather my connection to my friend's device, which ends up creating a LAN that Localsend can work through, but this is not as nice an experience.
https://mbarlow.github.io/thinair/
Device to device transfer, just a static github page.
gh repo: https://github.com/mbarlow/thinair
Creates QR codes for each device to scan for webrtc. Android to android will do an audible chirp that lets the devices know to switch from qr code mode to opening the camera to scan each others codes. Tested android to apple and working, the audio chirp doesn't get caught by apple. Just wait and eventually the qr code will dissolve to allow scanning step.
Just threw this together. I was playing with audio handshake using bird-like chirp "songs" or old school modem between smartphones. Fun putting phones together as they send audio frames and confirm to start transfer, but unreliable and slow to handshake. I would like to cleanup the flow to improve. I've started using it for sending files between iphone/android/pc without having to deal with apps, emails, accounts, etc. blah.
This is using webrtc and speeds are slower than a physical USB I get 3-4MB/s instead of local network speed of 30MB/s due to browser browser implementation bottlenecks. I needed fast local network sharing of files over 5GB and tried a lot of approaches and speed doesn't budge more than 6-7MB/s .
Also you don't even need a server atleast for now in chrome webrtc transfer can work over a file:// in firefox it doesn't. For signaling you could even use free peerjs tunnel or other when user is connected to internet and otherwise fallback to this QR or offer code sharing. This will become so useful if browsers eliminate those bottlenecks.
also even in localsend speeds are limited usually to my internet speed for some reason.
Whenever I need to use something like this it's because the device isn't mine, which makes this so much better than an app. Would be cool if there was a text message option, and a bit of server so the second scan wouldn't be required. Pretty funny how simple the concept is though.
Doesn't seem to work for sending files from my Mac to my Android - I scan the code on the phone and....nothing happens? I tried sending via FF/Safari/Brave and receiving on FF/DDG. No idea what am I doing wrong.
For true crossplatform p2p the closest I have found is FlyingCarpet [1].
But it is not super reliable or friendly.
[1] https://github.com/spieglt/FlyingCarpet
We've made the one true, and ultimate, cross platform P2P + E2EE data transfer tool out there.
Both UI and CLI with complete feature parity on any device/OS, between the same user's devices and between users.
https://zynk.it
iOS App 10€/month Hmm - no.
Thanks for the tip. Just tried it and it worked great between MacOS and Android.
Make sure to also try PairDrop https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47935875
It's a pretty polished PWA you don't even need to install as it uses WebRTC P2P streaming in the local network or via TURN over internet.
So a good solution for ad-hoc file sharing without ad-hoc network.
I use wormhole.app
Very cool, I didn't know about this. I'll watch it with interest.
Airdrop is also pretty weird: sometimes it can’t find other phones (probably when a previous transfer failed silently in the background). Also, it had some issues searching for contacts when there was no mobile/Wi-Fi connection (tried to send photos to another phone in the mountains). Sometimes it could just freeze and not work… Apple magic here isn’t really useful.
Indeed, Localsend only does the last step of what Airdrop does. With Localsend, you need to:
- Create an ad-hoc Wi-Fi network on one device.
- Connect the other device(s) to that Wi-Fi network.
- Now run Localsend.
The first two steps are a bit of a drag, and the fact that Airdrop handles it is what makes it so frictionless to use.
Right, the first two steps are what make AirDrop, "AirDrop". This isn't an alternative at all if it requires both devices to already be connected to the same WiFi.
AirDrop is fantastic for sharing files with people you don't know/just met - if we have to find and agree to join the same wifi before we interact we are no longer talking about the same feature.
If Apple's AirDrop implementation had required people to join the same WiFi first, the feature would never have taken off the way it has among non-techy users. I'm still today mildly surprised I can use AirDrop as a verb in conversation and most of the time the other party knows what I mean.
This. Localsend may be very useful for a set of devices you control or influence. The USP of Airdrop is ad hoc sharing with people you don't really know. Classic case is meeting strangers on holiday and you want to swap some photos of the trip you're on. One or both of you doesn't have data or time to install anything, or it's just too hard to persuade someone they should install random app. Pairing Bluetooth or setting up local networks is way too convoluted and time consuming.
With Airdrop you have trivially easy, "just works" sharing with people in proximity. It works great between iPhones and Pixel phones now they support it. It just needs support to spread to more Android devices.
> With Airdrop you have trivially easy, "just works" sharing with people in proximity.
Funny enough, I encounter so many problems trying to share things via AirDrop with friends, family, and even my own Apple devices that I just tell everyone to install LocalSend and I find that things work better.
I’m not sure why that is, because AirDrop used to work pretty well for me. But it’s been an exercise in frustration more often than not for me.
(Obviously, LocalSend works only as long as everyone is on the same network.)
I've found it very often falls back to sending over your internet connection even if your cell reception sucks. No idea why. People on a previous HN thread talked about solutions
setting up local networks is so trivial compared to forcing everyone to buy an Apple gizmo.
The real choice though is between (a) buying an apple gizmo and not having to set up local networks; and (b) buying a non-apple gizmo and having to do that.
True. But I mean these are photos (from strangers that you aren’t even willing to exchange phone numbers with?). It is a really non-essential feature anyway, so most likely everybody who doesn’t have an Apple device skips it.
If it's videos sending over local wifi is the best option, even with people you know.
Not only that, but with iOS 17.1 or later, AirDrop transfers will continue to work if you go out of Wi-Fi range during the transfer. It seamlessly switches to an Internet-based relay.
Which, in my view, significantly decreases the value proposition, as there is no way to deactivate this feature to my knowledge (at least not without also opting out of other useful features under the "Handoff" umbrella).
A typical Apple feature, dreamed up by engineers that are presumably not aware of the existence of metered data plans...
You can disable it, actually.
Settings > General > AirDrop > turn off Use Cellular Data
That said, I don’t really see why you would disable that. It’s only a backup method for when the peer-to-peer connection fails. Unless you are sending huge files on a regular basis, I wouldn’t expect it to be worth disabling. Also, most metered plans I’ve encountered just cause your connection to be very slow after you hit the data cap.
If you are on a plan that automatically charges you excessive overage fees without warning and there is no other choice, then my condolences.
Oh, cool, thank you! I must have used the wrong search terms; I could only find vague hints about deactivating Handoff/Continuity.
I stand corrected, and I appreciate that Apple did consider the non-Bay-Area use case :)
> Unless you are sending huge files on a regular basis
I do use AirDrop extensively for sharing photos when traveling. One sharing session could easily eat through my roaming allowance.
Speaking of ad-hoc communication channels that do not require shared infrastructure: I like the idea of https://github.com/divan/txqr which sends data using animated QR codes. An ultimate guarantee of physical proximity. The bandwidth is not comparable to WiFi 6, of course, but no OS support is required.
With color it would be even faster! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Capacity_Color_Barcode
The better example for colored QRs is https://jabcode.org/ by by Fraunhofer Institute for Secure Information Technology. It is more recent and actively maintained.
I think nowadays on Android it's called QuickShare, and it works. But I believe the fragmentation and awareness is a part of the problem for Android.
Can't QuickShare cross-platform. My wife has an iPhone and my desktop and laptop are linux, so QuickShare is a non-solution for me.
Didn't they just announce compatibility between specific Android devices and iOS airdrop using Quickshare recently ?
rquickshare works on Linux and is 99% reliable for me, but I don't have a suggestion for iOS devices since I don't use them. https://github.com/Martichou/rquickshare/releases
Which alternatives are you using for AirDrop on Linux? I haven't been able to find a good one for this yet.
I've built my own, called KEIBIDROP :D but did not release the mobile apps let
https://github.com/KeibiSoft/KeibiDrop
With Linux it's very easy as long as you're okay going offline - just make an ad hoc wifi network, have the other device connect to it, then you can do whatever (Localsend, host a local webserver on the linux machine, whatever.)
I used to use Nitroshare, but Localsend has supplanted it.
Localsend and KDE Connect
KDE Connect works pretty great for sending files, though you do have to be on the same network.
QuickShare is compatible with AirDrop these days, thanks to EU regulations: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/11/the-eu-made-apple-ad...
I don’t think this article is actually accurate. It seems like Google just reverse engineered airdrop rather than Apple changing the tech they use. Because quickshare works with all airdrop devices now. Not just ones recently updated.
One Android phone supports it so far, and it's widely expected Apple will find some way to lock it out or at least delay more support.
it's widely expected Apple will find some way to lock it out
I suppose that is "widely expected" from the usual group of anti-Apple internet griefers looking for a reason to moan in public, rather than actually doing some research or knowing things.
To quote a sibling comment:
"Apple contributed the core logic to the Wi-Fi Alliance to build Wi-Fi Aware, which they now also support."
Glass half empty kinda guy, huh? :-)
Not generally, I just don't have that specific phone that has implemented the workaround, and so this isn't a solution for me.
Apple has consistently done everything it can to self-sabotage their implementations of stuff to comply with EU anti-trust legislation like the stuff with digital marketplaces, so I'm not holding my breath on this.
Iroh is a relay protocol for peer to peer transfers over the Internet so it doesn't have this problem, check out my other comment here about wrappers around the protocol for sending files, Sendme is the one I use.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47935026
I don't want to send things over the internet, I want to do things locally.
https://www.iroh.computer/sendme
Iroh's protocol can figure out if the devices are on the same LAN and avoid going over the internet. It can work without a discovery server too -- i.e. completely LAN.
bluetooth is local. Actually, I realise I'm being facetious since I've not managed to get Apple bluetooth to connect to anything non Apple yet.
Bluetooth is also very slow. Airdrop and Localsend achieve speed by using local wifi networks. The problem with Localsend is that the user themselves need to manage the creation of the local network.
Airdrop has not felt reliable to me all the time, and completely fails on anything larger than a picture or short video. Especially if you are storing your files on iCloud and the pictures and videos don't live on your phone.
Been using Localsend to transfer bigger files between phone / laptops, never fails or has trouble finding a device, or stalling.
websend works even on separate networks.
https://github.com/thiswillbeyourgithub/WebSend
Note that I'm currently refactoring it heavily (the code is awful currently).
That's why we worked very hard to create the ultimate, nothing held back tool and recently launched it. Works across any device/user/platform.
UI, CLI, Local network, over the internet, anything. P2P + E2EE.
https://zynk.it
Not interested in an over-over-the-internet solution. What makes Airdrop good is that it's local.
Works locally too, for local transfers.
Maybe you can try this: https://github.com/nuwainfo/ffl
It's Android App don't need LAN to share: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.fastfileli...
Feem is the only reliable one I've found that doesn't rely on being on the same local network
It works on iOS and Android
I just use blip to send files to anyone on any device but it requires an account
I am usually able to coerce a Localsend connection by using a WiFi hotspot on the target device.
Usually, but not always.
I literally said that in my comment:
> The workaround I've found after switching to an Android device has been to teather my connection to my friend's device, which ends up creating a LAN that Localsend can work through, but this is not as nice an experience.
I've recently started using blip, which works very similarly to airdrop after the initial pairing has happened. The devices do not need to be on the same network etc.
I just use blip to send files to anyone on any device
Wireguard VPN to your home network, and then you can do anything
"Check out this alternative road vehicle I invented: it works on most surfaces except it can't drive on inter-city roads."
"You could fix that by builing a rail track and using a train."
And everyone you ever want to share files with locally also has access to your home VPN?
That's an even worse solution than the hacky workaround of just teathering my internet connection.
The whole point of these solutions is to not have to transmit data over the internet, it should work over a local dynamic connection.
yeah the airdrop part is not having to turn one phone into a hotspot first.
If you're on a hike you can get on the same network by joining your friend's phone WiFi hotspot.
I literally said that in my comment. I also said it's not as nice an experience.
Whoops, totally missed that. Maybe Localsend could include some "discover" mode where Wi-Fi hotspot connection happens automatically?
I'm honestly surprised that WiFi Hotspot doesn't isolate hosts, after companies like Meta have been caught running servers inside their apps and connecting to those to track users.
I was too when due to network problems at our last traditional LAN-party (WC3, CS1.6 etc.) we used the hotspot feature of one phone to get everyone on a local network. I was skeptical and assumed the PCs wouldnt be able to see each other but lo and behold: it worked flawlessly!
try out this app called "Blip". It doesn't require you to be on the same network.
It does require an internet connection though, which is worse.
Yes exactly, that's why another RCE which will be found in Airdrop, if found by bad actor. Will be pretty fun to watch.
Last RCE in Airdrop, could be made into worm, it was found by whitehat, luckily for Apple there are still people, which are willing report exploits for little money, so billionaires can enjoy their life on yachts.
How is this at all unique to AirDrop?
[flagged]
Please see https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html#generated and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47340079.
Both Samsung and Google already did it. My S26 Ultra supports Airdrop and I've tested it by sending and receiving photos with iPad
Is this upstreamed in AOSP?
What do you mean they support airdrop? Natively?
Yes Google added the feature recently https://blog.google/products-and-platforms/platforms/android...
Is this working seamlessly? Iirc you needed to switch settings to bypass the contacts only thing. Plus Apple can of course create more adversarial hurdles to lock other vendors out.
And, of course this only solves the phone - phone, and not even all of them. Desktops & laptops have less hope.
Yes, natively. Thanks Google: https://blog.google/products-and-platforms/platforms/android...
>It uses a time-sliced channel-hopping mechanism so the radio can serve both infrastructure WiFi and the direct peer link simultaneously.
This seems like such a basic solution that I'm surprised that it isn't required by any of the mainstream standards before WiFi Aware. I wonder if this was some sort of a patent issue or similar.
It's been a standard feature of many Wi-Fi chipsets/drivers for over a decade.
Almost certainly patent related
It is entirely possible to inject (unrelated) wifi frames while being associated to a BSS without violating the existing 802.11 standards. That’s why Apple is able to implement AWDL on standard compliant wifi hardware.
However the path towards this type of interoperability would likely go through additional standardization via IEEE 802.11* and the Wi-Fi alliance. At which point Apple will need to implement and support the new standards. There is no need to reverse engineer AWDL to meet the new European interoperability requirements. What is needed is for wifi chipset OEMs to implement such standardization. Something pretty routine of them.
It can be expected that Apple will also maintain the proprietary AWDL in order to support their legacy devices.
AFAIK, Wi-Fi Aware / Neighbourhood Aware Networking is basically the "standardised" version of AirDrop, and as of 2025, iOS's Airdrop transparently inter-operates with it.
For those interested to read more on AWDL I've listed some interesting articles that I came across during lit review a while back
A research lab from TUD worked on a project investigating Apple's wireless ecosystem Link: https://owlink.org/publications/
Also something interesting that I remembered reading closely linked to AWDL?
Link: https://projectzero.google/2020/12/an-ios-zero-click-radio-p...
AWDL is such an amazing technology, it's understandable that Apple wants to keep it only for their devices as it gives them a noticeable advantage for quick stuff sharing.
They didn't. Apple contributed the core logic to the Wi-Fi Alliance to build Wi-Fi Aware, which they now also support.
Interestingly, it still took the EU to force them to actually adopt it (and open it up for apps to use) in iOS 26.
PSA:
* https://www.wi-fi.org/wi-fi-aware-resources
* https://developer.apple.com/documentation/WiFiAware
* https://developer.android.com/develop/connectivity/wifi/wifi...
Apple docs say iOS 26/macOS 26, that's so brand new that no apps are using it right now, will have to check that again in a few years.
Kind of. When I looked, they added the api for devs to use on iOS, but it isn’t on macOS yet, and nothing uses it as far as I could see.
It’s a future promising tech though. A much better version of Wi-Fi Direct.
So, should there be apps that use it to transfer files between iOS, Android, Windows, and Mac without requiring them to be on the same network?
Google's QuickShare contains a reverse-engineered AWDL implementation that works on Pixel and a few other phones.
As for WiFi NAN: support for it seems rather limited outside of iOS and Android. From what I can tell the feature is barely tested on Linux and I can't find any generic Windows APIs for it either.
No WiFi cards for pcs support it.
Researched this for a bit: there is some hardware for PCI supporting it, but Windows 10/11 not, and Linux is still work in progress, so no real support on OS level, only for some iOS/Android devices.
Afaik the hardware supports it for a while now, but there is no firmware to expose the functionality.
That's not quite accurate, I don't think.
I've definitely used STA and AP modes concurrently on my Windows laptop with the operating system's built-in internet connection sharing function to help troubleshoot a problem in the field.
That was around a decade ago. It didn't take any extra effort on my part; I just told it to do the thing, and then it did that thing.
it might be interesting to use unused or extra wifi cards to support this. My pc motherboard has both wifi and ethernet and I only use the ethernet. That card does absolutely nothing at all.
The EU required they use an open standard https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/11/the-eu-made-apple-ad...
AWDL really isn't that novel, neither as an idea nor implementation. What Apple did nail is the user experience on top of it.
Except 20% of the time it just doesn’t work. Hardly an advantage if most people default to texting because of airdrop’s failure rate
We have been using AWDL intensely (not via AirDrop but Network.framework) for 6+ years and it fails less than 5% of the time. It's pretty impressive for a non-connected link between devices. The most common problems we face are very high device density places (100+ device in 30sqm space) and device wandering out of reach quickly (sometime as low as 5m).
Agreed. It's been like that for years.
> which is a proprietary peer-to-peer layer that runs alongside your existing WiFi connection without dropping it. It uses a time-sliced channel-hopping mechanism so the radio can serve both infrastructure WiFi and the direct peer link simultaneously.
Maybe a network nerd can chime in - is this implementation so difficult that it's unrealistic we'll see an OSS version?
I think the thing that makes an OSS implementation more difficult than iOS/macOS is the friction involved.
Say you've got an android phone, windows PC, and a linux box, and you want to be able to quickly drop files from each one. unless we get some kind of cooperation across all three platforms at the OS level, you'd at minimum need to install some kind of client into each system - when the nicest feature of airdrop is that it's baked into all of Apple's OSs, in my opinion. even if it worked exactly the same way, but had to be installed, I think it would see less use - and there's no real way for a single OSS project to do that across multiple OS platforms, to my knowledge
The physical layer part really isn't complicated, and most Wi-Fi chipsets have supported something like it for over a decade now.
What's tricky is to specify and get everybody to implement the layers on top of it, including device discovery (frequently offloaded to Bluetooth for efficiency reasons), user identification (Apple runs a PKI for this) etc.
Not an expert on mobile development but I doubt an android app has the low-level access needed to the wifi stack to do this.
There is an open standard for that which is included in Apple devices since the iPhone 15. google implements it since the pixel 3. It’s called NAN. There are no WiFi cards available for consumers to buy which expose that as part of their firmware sadly. But wpa_supplicant has implemented part of the standard.
This is misinformation, including most of the comments here, the majority of phones from 2014 support Wi-Fi Direct, and simultaneous group and station mode (2 BSS, yes even different channels). Even most Wi-Fi chips generally not just smartphones for a very long time. They stay connected to your home network.
When Quickshare drops your Wi-Fi connection, its not Direct anymore, that's just soft AP from an error, and if that doesn't work, it fallback to Bluetooth. Bluetooth is used for provisioning as well.
The only reason why many apps don't use it is because of buggy implementation, some phones require a full restart after using Wi-Fi Direct to fix connectivity issues, even Motorola's own product line with Smart Connect use it only with certain models, despite having Wi-Fi direct due to poor implementation (can be forced). They even have a white list of supported adapter for the Windows app since direct is used as well, can be unofficially force enabled for Mediatek based adapters (rare on some laptops).
Back in 2016 things were much stable on Android phones with Wi-Fi Direct, even with old Blackberry, there were many apps including file managers that used it before it was essentially dropped, even for onboarding/provisioning apps like HP printers...
Apple's Airdrop success is about gaining traction, in the era of Wi-Fi Direct or other methods, most people were not aware of such features, as it required an app to be installed, they used email/messaging, even when Airdrop was first introduced and preinstalled, it took years for the average person to use it.
> It uses a time-sliced channel-hopping mechanism so the radio can serve both infrastructure WiFi and the direct peer link simultaneously.
This is really nothing special as 802.11 implementations go, as it's pretty easy to do as long as you can control the physical channel for at least one side.
Many Windows, Linux, and Android devices have been supporthing this for years. It's usually called something like "simultaneous AP/STA mode".
FYI this is an LLM comment, and other replies point out inaccuracies…
also they use mDNS, which many programming languages, such as go, got it in their net library
No they don’t? There are several 3p libs for it but not in std. Unless I’m blind and didn’t get the memo.
No you didn't miss. I mixed the concept, UDP broadcast similar to mDNS, yes part of net library. actual mDNS like visible in Finder and actual RFC implementation not part of standard library. What I was trying to say was easy to make "mdns-ish" with just standard lib, rush typed it and ended up like that.
Seems weird there is no 802.n variant to do this very popular thing
That's precisely what Wi-Fi Aware (NaN) is and it is heavily based on AWDL. It's even built into recent versions of iOS and Android.
I've never heard of Wi-Fi Aware, thanks for sharing. Are there any devices/chips that support it today?
iOS 26 supports it. I tried looking in to it and I couldn’t find anything using it yet though.
Wait did they actually name it NaN or is that a joke?
NAN, not NaN. NaN is parent's editorialization or muscle memory.
Oh; I thought maybe it just didn’t have an 802 type name so it might have just been a little joke.
Anyway, good to know we can use our NAN signal to send signal NaNs!
Fascinating! Thanks for breaking it down.
I thought airdrop also used bluetooth
Only for discovery. The actual transfer happens over WiFi, which is many times faster.
right, but that could set up the adhoc wifi network.
Recently started using it, it works really well and it's much more reliable than AirDrop. But the UX could be improved.
But I just wish Apple fixed AirDrop, every time I go to use I have so little confidence in it, it often doesn't see devices or if you have multiple Mac users it will confuse them, showing you the same Mac device twice without telling you which user it is
I'm curious, what do you people use this for? What are all these (presumably large) files that you guys are generating and transferring, that requires the use of apps like these?
Like in my case, the only files I generate on my phone are photos and videos, and these get backed up by Immich, which I can then share with someone by sending them a link to the files/album in question. I imagine normal folks would use iCloud or Google Photos for the same task.
For syncing other files like documents and such, I use ownCloud OCIS, and I'd imagine most other folks would use something like DropBox or iCloud, or even just email or WhatsApp the files.
For local network transfers of say ISOs or something, I'd just copy them over SMB, which is pretty much universal and doesn't need any special app. Or even just plug in a hard drive, if I'm doing backups.
So I don't understand why I should be using this.
Sending someone a link to a photo is a much worse experience than sending them the actual photo directly to their phone.
Sending a photo over text message often compresses it, which isn't always desirable. (Not actually sure if it gets compressed when sent of iMessage)
I've also used it to send people photos when we were in places without cell service like on hiking and camping trips.
Sending plain text from one device to another. I was debugging my steamdeck and I send code snippet from desktop chatgpt to steamdeck using Localsend to run. Then I send the debug output (also plaintext) back to desktop to ask chatgpt what to try next. Other than this, random small files from time to time. The app is lightweight and just works.
Threema's better for that use case
I use it for moving SSH keys, VPN configs, and .env files between my laptop and a work machine. Obviously don't want that sitting in dropbox, pasted into Slack, etc. Localsend on the same network, gone in two seconds no account and no history. Easier than spinning up scp every time.
For me, video is the main one. Sizes from 100MB - 3GB. Getting videos from an Apple device to an Android is a pain in the ass because I need to 2FA log in or click through something relatively convoluted (Dropbox, GDrive) or deal with pulling out some hardware I use once every 100 years (external drives). Localsend is a 2 or 3 click operation and very robust.
Luckily, Google enabled Airdrop inside of Quick Share so my phones and my MacBook and my Windows PC all can share now.
I use LocalSend a lot to send my clipboard or random files when I don't feel like using ssh or using NAS as intermediary.
I only use it for sending a bunch of photos that wouldn't go so well over iMessage, usually on vacation. And sometimes that vacation involves not having cell service. Otherwise I'll usually message a single photo to someone because AirDrop is finicky.
my kid recently wanted to transfer a picture from an iPad drawing app to a windows laptop, I wish I knew about localsend for that
Silly apple. They should remove airdrop and tell users they have to rely on an internet connection and use whatsapp or email for quick, one-off file transfers between their iphones and macbooks.
Have you tried troubleshooting those issues already? I had similar visibility issues in the past, but seems to always work now for me.
I think it initiates the connection over Bluetooth so if your Bluetooth is poor it isn’t going to work very well.
Yup, for me I can see the device but when I try to initiate a send it just doesn't show up on the other device about half the time. I've not found a reliable way to fix it either, toggling AirDrop on and off on both devices seems the best way to fix it but only works like 70% of the time.
I feel like we need a spamsolutions.txt [1] for purported AirDrop replacements.
This one fails the "must not require an existing Wi-Fi network that both peers are connected to" criterion.
[1] https://craphound.com/spamsolutions.txt
Look into Sendme [0] and AltSendme [1] (which is a GUI around the former), they use Iroh [2] which is an open-source encrypted peer-to-peer relay service to send data so there are no limits whatsoever for sending and receiving files, because there's no central server.
From my earlier comment about a similar thread a couple days ago about which file sharing apps people use [3]:
[0] https://github.com/n0-computer/sendme
[1] https://github.com/tonyantony300/alt-sendme
[2] https://github.com/n0-computer/iroh
[3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47906587
This kind of services that requires the user to share a seed/code to the recipient always seems kinda awkward to me. The code is not simple/short enough to be verbally communicated; If I can send the code, I usually can just send the file.
Not necessarily. For example I might have a few gigs of photos to send someone, and I want to send them uncompressed. I could text someone the seed or QR code for them to download the photos, but I can't send those photos (especially uncompressed, even if over RCS or WhatsApp) over text.
Wouldn’t this use your internet data, though? Isn’t the point of these tools to send locally without being limited by internet speeds and without having to use your mobile data?
The code can be easily communicated as a QR code. But a 100 MB file cannot.
https://github.com/schlagmichdoch/pairdrop
A similar project but this one works entirely in the browser and can connect to clients beyond your local network with "public" rooms
I'll need to give this a shot. I have Localsend installed for sending thing between my iPhone and Linux desktop, but it doesn't always play nice. Even with the Localsend port open in Firewalld it can take upwards of 10 minutes for the devices to see each other. A browser solution should at least have faster discovery.
Pairdrop is awesome! The docs are a bit hidden, the FAQ is at https://github.com/schlagmichdoch/pairdrop/blob/master/docs/... and the How-To for integration into Share menu on Android, iOS and Windows at https://github.com/schlagmichdoch/PairDrop/blob/master/docs/...
They forked sharedrop after it and snapdrop got acquired and enshittified by LimeWire, whoever that is now.
Submitted on its own: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47935875
Related: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43143559
Should have been called PearDrop
And it works in the browser. https://web.localsend.org/
From windows to android to iOS.
I can't get it to work on my end. Tried sending/receiving with Firefox, Chrome, mobile phone, a laptop.
Got this in the console: `WebRTC: ICE failed, add a TURN server and see about:webrtc for more details.` Not sure how to troubleshoot this. Most of the suggestions I found are for the devs not users.
EDIT: Ok, figured it out. It works if I disable Tailscale.
How does this work to discover things on the LAN from a browser?
Amazing! Though v1.18.0 hasn't dropped in F-droid yet
I wish you just send plaintext on the web app, it looks like it only works for files
Hi,
I am late to the party, but I was also building in this space in the last year,
Basically I did a peer to peer filesystem named keibidrop: https://keibidrop.com/
I made it public last week. It does what local send does, but also via WAN. Still did not launch the mobile apps.
And 1 up is that it has also a virutal filesystem that is synced both ways.
repository is here: https://github.com/KeibiSoft/KeibiDrop
The code is open source, except for the UI, and I did benchmark on loopback vs localsend (local send is faster :D )
https://keibisoft.com/blog/keibidrop-benchmarks-vs-competiti...
and was also trying to get a commenting thread in /r/golang yesterday!
behind the hood I went with PQC, + gRPC + FUSE.
Very interesting. With the "virtual folders" feature, doesn't this also compete with Syncthing kind of? I have actually been looking for a solution like Syncthing, where I can write and cache files offline without actually having all the files in the full synced folder on every device (just my NAS). Kind of a hybrid between a remote filesystem mount and full-on folder sync.
I made websend to make it easier and secure to send images from phones to computers. It also allows automatically OCRing and cropping etc to turn a bunch of pictures into a proper pdf when there's no flatbed scanner around.
https://github.com/thiswillbeyourgithub/WebSend
Note that I'm currently refactoring it heavily (the code is awful currently).
This is a great app! Simple and does the job.
The F1TV app is not available in my country on play store on my Google TV. The first time, I logged into the device using the android debugger to install the APK - I didn't want to use an ad-full app. Then I tried LocalSend, and it is now my default to send the APK from my mac to my android tv. Love the simple experience. Minor quirks in the UI, but gets the job done.
After switching to Linux, this was one of the very first applications I installed.
It really helped cement how great open source apps can be for me.
LocalSend is the best app to transfer files from mobile to computer wireless that I have fund.
But it has one really big weakness/bug. When you transfer a file and it get interrupted, the half written file on the receiving end is not removed and you get an corrupted file. If you dont notice it, it could look like al files are transfered, but they are not. This is really bad, it is not how files should be "copied/transfered".
I use it on all my devices and tbh it's the absolute best option I found.
Previously I was using syncthing or had to install ftp server, used wormhole after packing all my files into one, etc. Android QuickShare never worked for me (wouldn't help me much with sending to the pc either).
It has some rough edges (ie: on multi-homed devices it's less that ideal to see the one octet that matters, when the list is very long scrolling whilst sending will cause the process to crap out), but other than that it's always reliable.
I'm very happy with it too.
For your own trusted devices on a LAN, you should try KDE Connect. KDE is not required.
What do you find to be better about it over LocalSend? (The website seems to be down)
Thanks for reminding me, I actually heard about that too.
List of browser based p2p file sharing tools https://gist.github.com/SMUsamaShah/fd6e275e44009b72f64d0570...
I just use send(formerly FF send) and share a URL via chat or whatever: https://github.com/timvisee/send
With a CLI tool as well: https://github.com/timvisee/ffsend
Also https://wormhole.app/, but feross is busy witch Socket and the myriad of NPM supply chain attacks nowadays
Thanks for the mention!
One of the most convenient aspects of Air Drop for me is that it selects the fastest available connection between the devices and ability to work without both devices being on the same network.
I wonder if any of the alternatives do the same.
Quickshare does
Never worked for me, not even once.
I tried on three phones, two of which are using the same account, I'm reasonably confident I am technically competent to not make silly mistakes, though the best I've achieved was endless wait.
I had better success with IR and BT file transfers. Hell, even spinning a local http server (with python -m http.server) works better than quick share.
Idk what Quickshare is, but AirDrop has only worked like 25% of the time for me
Quickshare is the Google alternative to airdrop
The closest I found to AirDrops ease of use is Blip https://blip.net/. Works like charm, supported on pretty much all platforms, works on local and non-local networks (P2P) and has no file size limit. I was pretty surprised it's free for personal use.
Seems like Localsend doesn't currently work reliably with Tailscale enabled. This is a bummer. Hope they also allow sending files between clients on the same tailnet, that'll be super neat.
Unfortunately I can't use it in my office. Because for some reason the network there is designed in the way one computer can't see another even if there're on the same wifi. So basically if I setup a server on pc#1, I can't open pc#1.ip:port on pc#2. As a result Localsend doesn't work
Lovely, but was replaced by KDE Connect for me. Connect works for iOS, macOS, Android, Linux, you name it.
I like kde connect, but find it randomly breaks every month or so and for the life of me cannot figure out why. A week or so later it starts working again.
Posted here many times https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=github.com/localsend
I like LocalSend. It solves the problem of: I want a clean GUI to transfer files between mac, iPhone and Windows/Linux while developing software.
It doesn’t solve every edge case but I don’t need it to.
One large past thread and two tinies:
Localsend: An open-source cross-platform alternative to AirDrop - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43343574 - March 2025 (1 comment)
Localsend: Open-Source Airdrop Alternative - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37938183 - Oct 2023 (229 comments)
Localsend: An open source cross-platform alternative to AirDrop - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34936796 - Feb 2023 (1 comment)
(Reposts are fine after a year or so; links to past threads are just to satisfy extra-curious readers)
Just use the existing magic wormhole protocol. It works and has been deployed for a long time.
No. It is using a central “well known server” and requires internet.
Test:
Basically my Garmin Edge and iPhone can do this. Magic-Wormhole fails in all test cases.Implementation shall be able to negoiate a connection locally (e.g. Bluetooth) and upgrade to peer-to-peer WiFi if need (Garmin doesn’t need that part, GPX are usually smaller than 1024 KB).
Modifications can be made to do that minimal peer exchange over BT. They may already exist, but I haven't used that part yet.
It seems like a lot of extra work to reinvent the wheel and get the security wrong instead of extending a well established protocol with many other tools built on top of it.
This has been on my mind a lot as AirDrop has continuously failed to find devices on my network (no VPN enabled on either device, no weird routing or tunneling, even after flushing networking stuff).
Just set this up in a few minutes and it works a peach (quite fast, too). Just nudged me a little closer toward a "just use Linux" default.
I'm retired now, but love seeing the new generation tackle age old problems. I built something similar to this (albeit, close sourced) about 12 years ago. It was called "bullet" and was aimed at transferring text based content using a custom stickies app.
This application supports the following platforms: Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, iOS, and FireOS. I was surprised. It is very interesting that it is implemented using a combination of REST API, HTTPS encryption, and local networking.
Everybody here is complaining about how this isn't as good as airdrop, and that may be true.
I have not really used airdrop, and this app is super useful to me.
There are packages for iOS app store, but it isn't in any Debian/Ubuntu/Fedora repo? Just snap/flatpak.
Am I correct in thinking community maintainers have little to no visibility therefore?
Additionally, is there any indication what source code is used to build an app store submission? Even a checksum?
came with omarchy pre installed, usedd it ever since. bonus points for it being open source too. i was surprised it is written in flutter. looking at how mutli-platform it is, flutter was the more appealing choice.
D'accord.
Is there a firefox send alternative that can work on the cloudflare infra? I would like a low cost, deploy and forget service to send files to people
I love this software for its reliability (as compared to, say, KDE Connect, which I gave up on after years of frustrated use after it became clear that the developers did not believe there was an issue and it would never improve).
I do not love that it is a heavy electron app that takes many seconds to launch on my mid-spec machine and burns 20% of an entire CPU core the entire time it is running.
Why can't we have a simple command line tool that works?
It’s open source so you can put together that CLI yourself if so motivated
For years I have been syncing with great success using the most basic FOSS tools: `rsync` over `sshfs` on desktop, and SSHD (via an app called Dropbear available on F-Droid) on mobile, using an ad-hoc network over the wifi hotspot (which is turned on by Macrodroid - alas not FOSS - when the device is plugged in). This setup is rock-solid reliable and very fast.
Great app. I wish it supported PWA features like Web Share Targeting.
https://web.dev/articles/web-share
https://developer.chrome.com/docs/capabilities/web-apis/web-...
They have web app but had terrible experience with it (can't find devices when you are using the mobile app and the other device is using the web app).
https://github.com/localsend/web
I'm using it, it's great and interoperable. Win - Mac, Mac - android, whatever is your wish. Any combination. However on Mac it prevents the laptop from sleep for some reason
I would be curious how this behaves on messy home and office networks with client isolation, captive portals, and flaky multicast. That is usually where these otherwise elegant tools either earn trust or quietly fall apart.
It's LAN only, so those networks will block it.
I love this app, it's on all my devices, it's also written in my favourite cross platform development framework (dart/flutter). Very useful app, with a massive advantage of airdrop, no need for apple. Irrespective of if it's a drop in replacement.
I used it, but it prevented my mac from sleeping. After some investigation I found it's local send.
Does it run in the background?
- pro tip, if you want to send a directory, compress it as an archive and send i
- for whatever reason, even the same sized directory takes much much longer than its corresponding archive version when using this tool
I use local send when KDE connect isn’t working for me. The big problem with these is that you basically have to spend a minute or two setting up both devices to send.
I end up just opening a web server in termux on my phone and having the other side download from my hotspot every time i want to transfer a file because all the other android solutions really really suck.
I use this all the time dropping files from old android device to mac, thanks devs!
It's not even close to the speed AirDrop has. This is not an alternative to AirDrop. I tried it multiple times but it's slow every time. These alternatives don't use the same technology.
It is an alternative. It just doesn't fulfill all the needs Airdrop does. I've had situation where I want to share a photo or a text file and it'll work great in that scenario.
Probably the main "feature" AirDrop has is speed. Other alternatives should include that "feature".
No it isn't? The main feature is sending things peer to peer.
That's not a feature that's a purpose.
So what? Anyway the more important difference is it requires both computers to be on the same LAN. The main point of AirDrop is you can share between two devices with or without LAN, with or without internet.
It's faster than the standard wireless transfer speed between my iPhone and my Windows PC (0 KB/s)
This works great for me to transfer stuff between my own devices in my home, but it's not an AirDrop replacement at all, so I don't know why they advertise it like that.
I've been using this for years, simple, gets the job done. Nice UI.
Localsend is awesome! My team and I use it all the time for safely transmitting vpn configs, ssh keys, etc... It works flawlessly. The auto-generated names are pretty fun too.
I'd love this to work but I always had trouble making it work on my google tv. Wanted to share files (~2 gb files) from my Mac to my TV but the transfer kept failing
Here's my take: https://aero.zip
End-to-end encrypted, no need to be on the same LAN, upload/download auto-resume, real-time transfers (start downloading before upload finishes), really fast (10 Gbps link, smart chunking).
Also zero-knowledge logins (via OPAQUE), passkey/2FA support, no AI training now or ever, GDPR compatible. 2 GB transfers are free.
Does this use libp2p[0]?
[0]: https://libp2p.io/
Using LocalSend to send files across iOS, Mac and Windows. When everything is on the local network, it works pretty nicely.
KDE is more seamless, but localsend works consistently so I have both running.
Been using LocalSend for a few years, it works great even when sharing files between devices sharing a mobile connection.
I found blip works better on ios and windows. Not losing transfers midway like localsend.
Blip definitely has a better UX and it's nice that it can transfer between networks through their servers (obviously don't be sending sensitive stuff cause who knows how much they can be trusted)
But I consider my usage of it to be on borrowed time cause there's no way they're gonna let everyone forever beam unlimited data through their servers forever. They're accumulating users before they make you pay, it's just a matter of time. But I'm enjoying it while I can.
I swear there's a new one of these every year. Not a single one sticks around.
I've been using LocalSend for quite some time now, after hearing about it for years. It's not a new one.
Been using this on all my devices (macos, iPhone, iPad, android, windows) and love it!
To send files locally why not set up a wifi hotspot?
Then you can transfer files to and from uncool people with Android or Linux phones/computers using localsend.
I've never found this difficult and often use hotspots when I'm overseas - it's cheaper to get internet for one phone and share it with the others for example.
Are you lost? This is a post about Localsend...
PS: Pixel and Samsung devices support airdrop now.
I love local send. It’s ridiculously fast for sending large amounts of media too.
When multiple files are in transit, Localsend always transfers two at once.
Just found out about this last week and looks awesome.
I was using Localsend a bunch for Window <> iPhone before, really great product without hassle.
Really cool! I used it a couple of times and did not expect it to work. But it worked. :D
It’s not as slick as AirDrop and you have to sort of “prep“ both devices whenever you want to send/receive anything, it’s never just ready to go, but it’s incredibly reliable and will move anything from one machine to another. Just having that consistency across literally any device is so nice.
i really wish Wi-Fi Direct succeeded
maybe eventually something like quickshare & airdrop mold into an interoperable thing but i'm not holding my breath
WI-Fi Aware exists and is a standard
What do you guys think about an AI that has Multi agents personal assistance agentic commander all in one place..??
Using it works perfectly for me!
Why not use WebRTC? 0 download.
(I'm all for alternatives to AirDrop. I'm all for AirDrop inter-operability. Nothing against those things.)
For LAN file sharing, you can do it with any browser. Implementations like: https://sendfiles.dev/ (though there are many others)
As people have noted, the "local" part makes it hard.
Here's my question, y'all. What is the deal with the magic Syncthing uses and why can't we use it for stuff like this? And well, for everything?
(I've been doing this stuff for years and I still can't wrap my head around this question)
So needed
Excuse my ignorance but why are there so many solutions like this? Especially if they aren't intercompatible (which I'm assuming they're not)
Because none of them actually match the capabilities of AirDrop, since they essentially require controlling the full stack (UI, low-level networking including Bluetooth for discoverability, Wi-Fi peer to peer connections without dropping any existing infrastructure connection etc.)
Many have tried, I don't think anyone has succeeded.
Supposedly the EU interoperability mandate will make this possible going forward, though? (The tricky part is usually not getting your device to speak some protocol, but to get Apple devices to actually respond to your attempts.)
The README and website certainly seem polished, but I haven't used the utility yet.
What's the main value prop over wormhole? That it works from the browser?
That you can send over 1000 files without it messing it up, and they'll end in the right place.
That you can set the recipient so it will auto-accept from the trusted senders.
And for me that in Android I can do Share to....localsend to do it faster than with wormhole.
Hey I use this. Works great. Ez.