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Comment by DaSHacka | Hacker News Reader

If only we had something like AirDrop that reliably worked cross-platform.

Proximity-based sharing just makes significantly more sense than uploading files to some server miles away, then immediately redownloading them back when the computer was two feet away from you the whole time.

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Maybe LocalSend? https://localsend.org/

Windows, Linux, Android, iOS and macOS. Seems quite cross-platform. Can confirm it works smoothly for Linux and Android at the very least.

Most people will happily install entire ad package from Meta and Google, but not some unknown "LocalSend app".

I know that Meta and Google make money from data, but they are also competent, so they can be trusted to at least not get breeched or sell the data to the an aggregator.

“But they feed us for free in our competent concentration camp!”

If the choice was between 'the competent concentration camp' and 'the concentration camp run by one dude in his spare time', then if the question is 'which one is more likely to feed me', then yes, that is apt.

Seconded for LocalSend.

Works a treat for me.

Insane that we need a third party application for something as basic as this. This is as bad as an OS not shipping with a file browser.

I just tried it and it works as expected for Windows <--> Android.

I was using syncthing but this will replace it for one offs.

EDIT: I checked out another app in the comments and their website mentioned that it didn't work with a VPN. I can also confirm that LocalSend works when connected to VPN.

Never heard of it. Just tried it. Easy to install and run, copied one file in each direction (Linux/iOS).

Seems to good to be true. Are we sure this isn't malware?

Pairdrop was posted on HN a little while back and I setup an instance on my home network. Doesn't work everywhere obviously but it does seem to effectively solve this problem within my household.

https://github.com/schlagmichdoch/PairDrop

It dropped files midstream for me. Name checks out, I guess.

Does it require self-hosting a service?

no, you can use https://pairdrop.net/

Syncthing tries to send over the LAN if it's available, and only uses Internet relay servers if it can't establish LAN connectivity. This is why it's (usually) blazing fast. Not sure why the OP thinks this is a misuse of the tool. In fact, it's probably one of the intended purposes of it.

Nearby share maybe. It is being merged with quick share from samsung.

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