Show HN: It's 2022 and sharing files from Android to Mac is still a pain | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: It's 2022 and sharing files from Android to Mac is still a pain

28 pointsalexstyl62 comments

I always found sharing files from my Android phone to my Mac a pain. I wanted to have a way to share my photos, videos, documents etc from my phone directly to my MBP, without having to upload anything to the 'cloud' or some messaging app. Those ways tend to be less secure and fairly slow.

Because of this I made this little app you see on the video that enables you to share the files directly from your phone to your laptop. I have been using it for a while now for personal use and it works really well!

The app was recently made available to everyone. You can try it out for free via https://ubidrop.com

Happy to answer any questions you might have.

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Your app is appealing and kudos for building it. But I have 3 questions:

1. How is it different from using KDE Connect (Android) -> Soduto (Mac)? What is it doing differently?

2. Can I use this app offline that is, without internet connection. If yes, then how?

3. I see that this is a paid app. Are you planning to add other features too? (Find my phone, browsing files remotely on my phone, incoming call notifications etc.)

thanks!

1. Ubidrop focuses on getting the technical bits out of the way. The focus is sharing files without having to signin, exchange pin codes or do any sort of pairing.

2. The app works 100% offline. All files are transferred over your local network and nothing is shared over the Internet.

3. Right now I am focusing on nailing the file sharing experience. Not sure what I will focus on next. Those things change as the project evolves.

On point 2. How do I make it work without internet? App doesn't detect Mac as they're not on same Wifi (there is no wifi)

I see what you mean. It required both devices to be on the same WiFi for the time being.

Making the app work without the need of WiFi is one of the most requested features and in the todo list

It'd be a big differentiator: look forward to this being rolled out.

phone can still run hotspot mode, even when there's no upstream signal

Sharing files from Android to any computer is a pain.

If you ever need to transfer lots of files (for example while making backups), my recommendation is to use an FTP server app on your phone and then download the files on your PC (explorer.exe has native FTP support but use can use Filezilla or a different FTP client too).

I don't find using MTP on Windows or Linux that big a pain. It is a little more touchy than Mass Storage mode but compared to the dumpster fire of iOS and iTunes it may as well be perfection. Just plug in the cable and go pretty much. Of course Apple doesn't support it on Mac OS...

Sharing files from Android to any computer is a pain.

How so? On Windows and Linux I just plug it in and it shows up in my file browser. Mac is the only one that is difficult.

Sharing files from an iPhone to a computer on the other hand...

This has also been my experience. I have literally never had problems moving files between my phone and computer with both Linux and windows. The only OS I don't use is MacOS/iOS

On that hand, if the computer is running MacOS it's easy, just use Airdrop.

Vendor lock-in has its upsides!

That's incredibly slow compared to usb

fair point. what is your lifestyle like that you're regularly hitting that difference though? what phone data generator am I missing out on?

It's called a camera. It takes 4k videos.

Airdrop is great. But most of the times you don’t even need to transfer anything from iOS to Mac, the files are already there, thanks to iCloud.

A few years ago I would have hated this because of vendor lock in. As a user, this is just sooo convenient and easy.

And when the internet connectivity is gone, your files are also gone.

The MTP protocol is terrible for transferring a large number of big files (hangs and crashes a lot), and there's no way to reliably resume interrupted transfers.

> Sharing files frim Android to any computer is a pain

I totally disagree, one of my biggest frustrations with iOS is how awful it is to share files between the it and desktop. Android phones are generally USB mass storage devices, I can just plug it in via USB and it becomes an attached storage drive on any OS. Apple made the decision that it wouldn't use a standard like that, so i need to install iTunes (wtf?!), and that only works on platforms that iTunes supports.

I have no idea why you think FTP is faster than wired transfer. That sounds awful.

FTP is orthogonal to the issue of it being wired or unwired since you can connect the phone as an Ethernet device. Also popularly used for being a hotspot. FTPs pretty weird though. What is this, the 90's?

The iCloud app - even for Windows - allows files to be shared surprisingly quick. Granted, it takes time to show up (just like many cloud file sharing systems), but if you have something in iCloud before you even get home, it’s usually accessible on the PC by the time you settle in.

A cloud service like Google drive/photos is another option. Not the most logically efficient, but it works. I think Dropbox has a feature to share the files locally instead of via the cloud.

Doesn't really work with several dozens of GBs of files.

I use VLC on iOS to transfer files from Android and PC. VLC offers a handy network share which basically starts an HTTP server. The devices on the same network can then access that URL and from there onwards it is just drag and drop of folders and files.

It’s amazing to see you’re building and growing Ubidrop, Alex.

I spent a few months using Android and then went back to iPhone because it’s so hard to get Android OS working with MacOS. So many incompatible or non-smooth integrations between them.

Glad to see Ubidrop exist. I bet it will improve life of an Android user a lot.

Congrats on the launch. Dan

Thanks Dan. Integrations between Android and MacOS are really not great, and I think that's why many people are excited about Ubidrop so far.

Its remarkable how a-social "ecology" owners are, when it comes to making it easy to do things into or across ecologies. So, I can imagine an iPhone and a Mac do this better, but my goodness, the lack of motivation to make it simple for an Android and a Mac. or rinse and repeat for an iPhone and a chromebook.

"not my problem" and "hey, what if I said we sell more units inside our ecology if we make this a walled garden" come to mind.

100%. In a perfect world, all devices would play nice together.

Well that's what standards are for, but try telling that to Apple

927

What is this magic number? This feels like trolling

https://xkcd.com/927/ comes up every time the word standards is mentioned to the point that I figured the number would be enough

Apple is an anti-consumer company. They make choices designed to force users to stay within the ecosystem.

This is pretty cool! Transferring files from Android -> Mac is definitely a pain point for me and I'm sure many others. Nice work!

Your app is appealing since I use Signal to send my files .. the hustle is having to download from Signal desktop. And for image files I have to change ext to .zip in order to prevent compression.

Have been using Snapdrop (https://snapdrop.net), but product demo on the homepage of ubidrop looks compelling.

For those who can hack around a bit, Tailscale + KDEConnect can help you to send files from Android to any device (and vice versa) even when not in same network.

I've just been using AnyDrop.io, no application, just a website that works over local wifi to share files. I use it a ton if I can't use airdrop.

Sounds like snapdrop.net

I feel your pain! Currently using Snapdrop[1] but will check out Ubidrop.

[1] https://snapdrop.net

I used Tailscale‘s Taildrop [1] which did the trick for me.

[1] https://tailscale.com/kb/1106/taildrop

For those who are looking for an open source alternative, you can use Syncthing to share and sync files without uploading anything to the cloud.

Not to rain on your parade but Bluetooth has been solving that very problem across every OSes for _many_ years without having to install anything.

if that was true, why do people keep sending files to themselves via email, whatsapp and telegram?

I think it has been demonstrably true for maybe a good decade and half. As to why some people use alternative methods… maybe because they like it like that? Or maybe because they can't use Bluetooth for some reason? Or maybe they don't know better? Ask them.

Select a file, tap on "share", tap on "bluetooth", choose a device, wait a few seconds, done.

Personally, I don't use Bluetooth for these reasons:

1. It's clunky 2. It's slow 3. It's unreliable

Anything that has a better UX than Bluetooth file sharing is a win for me.

Well, I use Bluetooth because it has been part of every "device" I've owned in the last 15 years or so. Is it good for moving large files? Nope. Is it good for moving a handful of pics or videos between two devices? Yep.

Hell, I'm even listening to my Mac's music on the TV via Bluetooth as I write this.

Have you actually tried to send files via bluetooth from Android -> MacOS or Android -> iOS?

I can't make it work, the file just doesn't get through.

I do it relatively often, to make room on my Android phone. Did it no later than a couple days ago and the 17 pictures ended up in my Downloads folder as usual.

Literally just tried this and no, it doesn't work at all. Devices are connected but the sending fails (Android -> Mac)

Did you enable Bluetooth sharing on the Mac?

Yes

I just shared a photo using the sequence you described from Android -> MacOS.

Contrary to my sibling commenters, it did just work. A prompt appeared on MacOS asking if I wanted to accept the connection request, then asking if I wanted to accept a filee. I agreed, a download progress bar appeared until it was finished, and when it was done, the file was in the Downloads folder.

Wow, it was incredibly slow, though. Transfer rate ~50kB/s, about 500x slower than uploading the file to a cloud server somewhere and downloading it again. 2000x slower than local Wifi. Distance between devices: about 60cm. Time to transfer 1 photo: 10 seconds, after starting the download.

The Android UI was unhelpful for finding the Bluetooth option to share to. The Share icon showed 5 share methods (none of them Bluetooth, one of them "Quick Share" to "nearby Galaxy devices", it's even more specific than Android-only), plus 5 contacts-with-methods (none of them useful: SMS and WhatsApp, and I don't even have WhatsApp activated on this phone), plus a different kind of button for "Nearby Share" (something to do with nearby people in your Contacts, which doesn't explain how it does that so I assume some cloud service I'd rather not use). Finding "Bluetooth" involved some hardly discoverable horizontal scrolling with no visual affordance, using a different UI than the share options listed from other apps.

But it did work, extremely slowly.

It's not obvious, but some of the other share options use Bluetooth to set up the connection then Wifi to transfer the files, perhaps about ~2000x faster. Some supposedly use local Wifi alone, no Bluetooth required. Unfortunately I've never had success with any of them, so I can't confirm if any of them actually work as advertised. A few years ago I spent nearly an hour trying to all the different methods on the phone I had, to send a collection of photos from Android to MacOS without using an internet service, and nothing worked. Each built-in sharing method failed in some way, and standard Bluetooth file transfer was too slow. In the end I gave up and transferred just a few of the photos the slow way. It is striking (and absurd) that cloud services run much faster than local transfer - when both devices have access to a usable internet connection.

Are you joking? Bluetooth takes 20-30 seconds for me to send a 5-page PDF of a scanned document. As someone in university who had to scan hand-written documents and submit them for exams during COVID, bluetooth was literally useless. I used WhatsApp instead to send it to myself.

You are complaining about a 20-30 seconds upload time. I am not the one joking, here.

It's 2022, it should not take 20-30 seconds to transfer a small PDF between a phone and laptop.

I'm testing Ubidrop on Pixel 3 (latest OS update installed).

"App update is needed to send to that device".

Hmm what, so I'm not installing the latest APK?

It sounds like you are using an older version of the Android app.

The latest one is 1.10.0 and you can get it from https://www.ubidrop.com (until Google approves the play store one)

That's fixed in the latest desktop version. Get it from ubidrop.com

I use Syncthing with a "Documents" folder for that. All the stuff I want to keep goes there. Photos go in a different folder that is also synced with Syncthing.

When I want to send a file, I just put it in Documents. Works over WiFi or internet. Bonus: the file is replicated on a server, so it's available and in an easy to find location.

Is SyncThing not available on Android? Or something compatible with it?

That's because Apple has specially designed it to be difficult

why can't you just use https://www.android.com/filetransfer/ ?

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