It's a phone app that allows control of your desktop. you can control music, send files, use the camera from your phone to get pictures on the desktop, etc
How does it work? What apps are compatible? How is the connection between devices set up? Wire guard? If not, then what? How does it control apps and receive notifications?
At first it sounded to me like an alternative X11 thing
I hate it when projects/products only state what you can do (or at least what they envision), and not explaining the actual workings. Especially when data and access gets more and more important.
Same with I think it was postbox.. nice app, but they didn’t tell you that they need full access to your account, store “securely” on their server.. no thank you.
KDE framework has KIO library which provides network-transparent file access (that's why Konqueror works a file manager and a browser simultaneously). IIRC the author of KDE Connect was tinkering over sending notifications to a phone app and found out you can make much more with it.
> How is the connection between devices set up?
The server part uses 1716/UDP for broadcasting it's presence and 1716-1764/TCP to communicate with clients. The client had to be paired with server (like in Bluetooth), the communication is done via TLS, file browsing works over SFTP.
> How does it control apps and receive notifications?
Everything is done via plugins, both sides choose which ones are enabled and some have their own control schemes (i.e. whitelist of apps to sync notifications from phone).
it integrates in the desktop UI (and standard protocols, e.g. D-Bus, the "share as..." feature, etc) & phone UI (and standard protocols, e.g. MPRIS, the Android "share" feature, etc), it's mostly not about apps but about the shell, although some apps have nice additional integrations through extensions, like firefox.
For instance:
- when I copy on my linux desktop I can paste on my phone
- I can share links, files, etc between phone and desktop trivially (through the usual android feature on the phone, and through right-click in my desktop)
- when I have media playing either in my desktop media player or in web browsers I can control the playback from the phone
- I can use my phone as a remote control when I give talks & presentations
- I see my phone notifications on my desktop
etc
It's really the only thing that makes Android remotely tolerable for me.