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Comment by spectaclepiece | Hacker News Reader

Copy paste across all my apple devices is perhaps the most underrated killer feature of the apple ecosystem. I just wish there was a way to extend that to my Linux desktop.

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KDE Connect can do it between Linux/Mac and Android. No iOS unfortunately which is what I think you were looking for.

Not that it matters, but I think KDE Connect was available even before Apple's cross device copy paste

There is a GNOME and also Android implementation.

https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/1319/gsconnect/

https://f-droid.org/en/packages/org.kde.kdeconnect_tp

If you are determined enough, you could probably recreate it. I am not too fond of committing my copied items to gitlab (even though it’s a private repo).

The beauty of apples continuity feature is that the sync happens locally over Bluetooth/WiFi and secured by the Apple ID. Nothing is sent to a remote server, and each entry has a TTL.

I was going to mention that.

I have 2 macs for work. One for my employer, and one sent by the company I am contracted to work for.

Contract-mac is hugely locked down, requires all traffic to go through the VPN, and only allows non-VPN connections to the VPN.

Work-mac is fairly ordinary, not locked down except for anti-virus.

To get Magnet and a couple of other Apple store apps on the contract-mac, I signed in to the Apple store. Immediately, copy and paste started working across both macs. I'm not sure of the mechanism by which the clipboard was being "shared", but it felt like I'd get chewed out by contract-mac's security folks if I continued using it.

It's convenient, for sure, but could very easily be against security policy in larger enterprises.

Presumably logging into your personal account would be what’s against their policy. They should have set up an account for that computer to use. It’s also surprising that they didn’t ship it to you in a usable state.

It’s a killer feature until it stops working inexplicably, and the only solution is to wipe each device without restoring from a backup because Apple has no other solution to problems with iOS devices.

Source: Apple support to me when it stopped working

Untrue, you can also buy another device. This was also a solution posed to me by Apple.

Hah, you're absolutely right. I've had Apple support suggest buying new devices to me, including buying and returning after a short period where they're unable to do an advance RMA (what I like to informally call AppleCare++)

Every time I evaluate moving to Linux, it's features like this (and others like easier tethering, unlock with watch, ping my phone from any of my Apple devices, etc) that cause me to stick around in the Apple world. Some of it I can recreate via available software or implement easily myself, but it seems like too much effort to achieve parity.

I use screen sharing on my primary mac to log into two other macs, and copy/paste works between them without the need for logging into and apple id. Also drag and drop.

Windows also supports copy/paste between devices, including Android phones (only some Samsung models so far).

But that's not end to end encrypted, like Apple.

Completely agree. It works with media as well as text and it’s fantastic. It’s my favourite Apple feature.

How do you do that - copy and paste across Apple devices, I mean?

You just use ordinary copy on one device and then ordinary paste on the other.

https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/copy-and-paste-betw...

“To use Universal Clipboard, your devices must meet Continuity system requirements. They must also have Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and Handoff turned on in System Preferences (on your Mac) and in Settings (on your iOS and iPadOS devices). You must be signed in with the same Apple ID on all your devices”

System requirements more or less means “hardware is new enough” (https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204689; I think the technical reason is that it requires a specific Bluetooth version and macOS/iOS version)

Apple doesn’t say it, but I think the devices also must be on the same WiFi network and within Bluetooth range of each other.

Edit: as a consequence, if you lend your iPad to somebody for a few minutes while working on stuff you don’t want them to know about, log out of your Apple account. Without it, they can paste whatever happens to be on your clipboard.

Conversely, if you borrow someone else’s phone, don’t copy any secrets to the clipboard, even if you later replace that by something innocuous.

it happens over bluetooth/wifi; on devices that are signed in with the same iCloud account.

it's automatic.

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