Hi everyone,
I currently use Telegram to send photos, PDFs and text messages between my Android phone and my Debian laptop. It works, but everything goes through a third-party server, and I would like a fully local, privacy-friendly alternative.
What I need: Send photos, PDFs and other files in both directions (phone ↔ laptop) Send short text messages or clipboard content Works locally
Thanks for any advice and experience!
Syncthing is local and doesn’t use a cloud. It will sync directories between a linux machine and an android phone.
Kde connect
KDE Connect is super convenient
I use local send. It’s fantastic
KDE Connect can do clipboard contents, notifications, SMS from your PC, and file transfer, but I like Syncthing’s approach of folder synchronization better than sending files individually. I use both.
Agreed, I also use both. Currently syncthing only does my password database, but heavily considering setting it up for the rest of my standard phone files too, and dropping Immich, since every time I go to check on it they have released another breaking update (or at least released several new updates and the app refuses to connect anymore) and I am tired of it.
KDE Connect
This one beats any other option mentioned by miles.
Thank you guys. I’ve been using LocalSend for a year or so, and recently I noticed it’s Documents & Data is over 1 GB on my iPhone.
To me, that means that there’s some cache you cannot remove (the only way to clear that on iOS is to remove the app: I have just tried that, and it solves the issue).
I thought KDE Connect is more bloated. Turned out, it’s just 8 MB; and it has the ability to clear cache. All my computers are on Linux (Gnome or sway: perhaps that’s why I forgot about the KDE Connect), and I thought hey, really, why not!
So, as someone who used LocalSend for a long time: it does the job, but KDE Connect is just better, it turned out.
On Gnome you can use GSConnect for integration with Gnome shell.
LocalSend? https://localsend.org/
Second that. LocalSend is nice for this.
LocalSend is the best solution.
I can also reccomend KDE Connect for everything except file sharing; even though that’s the specific ask in this post, I’m just a huge evangelizer for it even if it’s file transfer as implemented is terrible in my experience.
I’m not a techie, why cant you just connect them through a cable?
I’m something of a techie myself, and yah, that’s how I do it.
a cable
reject modernity, embrace tradition
Hang on, I’ll just connect my Laplink cable to my parallel port.
As long as you do it in the privacy of your own bedroom
i use copyparty, connecting thru browser. but i also still use telegram saved messages like you because having a timeline helps my workflow. i wonder if there’s an alternative to that.
Use primitive Ftp or solid explorer on the phone to mount your phone’s disk right on your pc. On the PC side Dolphin (Linux) or freecommander (windows) are great file explorers for this. I also use KDE connect, but the ftp mount is way more powerful.
This or the other way round. FTPClient (f-droid) on the phone to access a PC.
Syncthing
There are plenty of good suggestions already, but one thing I do very often to get text from my computer to my phone is just displaying the text as a QR code and scanning that. You can make it work the other way around if you have a webcam, but that’s a bit more work.
Onionshare should work. You temporarily (or longer if desired) turn a folder/s into an onion site, which you can use to share between computers, not limited to just your own but also to others you give the key to.
