Alt-C: A neat little app to copy text between your device and your PC | Hacker News Reader

Alt-C: A neat little app to copy text between your device and your PC

altcopy.net

39 pointsbrettf31 comments

Just use Pushbullet, it can do that and send files and send URLs, and send to friends, and, and, and,... http://pushbullet.com

After using Pushbullet i really don't see the point in an app that does JUST this.

https://blog.pushbullet.com/2014/08/20/introducing-universal... - blog post about the feature (only official "documentation" on the feature I could find).

I find it interesting that the "PCs" that are show are obviously a macbook pro and an iMac -- although there is not yet any support for a mac/ios app.

Not sure what this means. It is interesting to me that the mac may now stand for a general PC.

Nice idea; however I'd be very surprised if there isn't already an implementation of this idea? It's kinda a streamlined Evernote (the way I use it) using the clipboard.

Klipper (KDE's clipboard for ctrl+C content) has a useful "make barcode" feature that allows you to highlight any text, which then is copied automatically to the clipboard, and turn it in to a QR code (I've got it on alt-V). Then the barcode reader on my phone can read the code and show the text; then I can copy-paste it on the phone. Clunky but working and using tools I've already got, no web involved (but the barcode app writer could be stealing the clips just as easily as the app writer in the OP).

I recently hacked a similar plugin for Cinnamon it could both read and write text via QR code to and from the clipboard. Sin e most desktops/laptops have webcams it works really well.

How secure is the information that I cut and paste? There's a brief mention of SSL on the website, but that doesn't clarify much.

Can the app author read my clippings? Is my data stored on any servers? If so, for how long? How securely is it deleted? Is it stored encrypted? Who has the encryption keys? Who can retrieve or see my data?

The information is transmitted over SSL. It is not stored on the back-end at all, only relayed via the backend & there is no way for the author to view the text.

Is there a specific reason the author can't view the text?

>there is no way for the author to view the text //

Presumably that is according to the author or is there some third party that has audited the code.

Thanks for clarifying, and good luck with the app. Data transfer between phones and computers is frustratingly painful right now, so anything that can bridge the gap is welcome.

Just to add, the data you see in the list is stored on the device/PC itself.

This is a lesson to me - if don't do your finishing touch properly, no one will notice.

I had submitted my similar open source app a long time back - http://oneclipboard.crushingboredom.com/. Sorry for the shameless plug :)

This is kinda funny - we should all hang out together or something :)

Here's my attempt: http://www.clipbrd.com/

Was looking for something similar, couldn't find a thing that worked well, so I had to build it myself. Too bad I don't have enough time to polish it, but it still works well for me.

Me too! my need was something that works over the internet. Here's one that's LAN only - http://bdwm.be/cs/.

One thing I noticed is that none of us attempted an iOS version :)

Absence of background apps was a dealbreaker on earlier iOS versions, but I think all the necessary APIs are in place now.

At this point I'm simply not motivated enough to do it. Especially considering Apple's attitude towards developers.

Thanks, I was looking for something like this. Alt-C only supports android and windows, and will never support my desktop systems(GNU/Linux and OpenBSD). Thanks :)

EDIT: If it's open source, though, where is the code?

Here - https://github.com/krishnaraj/oneclipboard, its in Java though :)

Should work out of the box on OpenBSD's X11 as well, thanks to it being in Java. Though I'm not a fan of the language itself.

> Select some text on your Smart device and copy it

This is the not-so-easy part. Especially if you have big fingers.

A better interface would allow me to just make a screenshot, send that over to my PC automatically, and extract the text from it.

Google's screen reader integration could be hooked into, would be better than OCRing a screenshot.

No end-to-end encryption, not even a privacy policy. Stay away...

Right on the front page: "Alt-C uses Google Cloud Messaging with SSL connections to copy the text."

End-to-end encryption means it's encrypted between the endpoints - any intermediate servers just see ciphertext and never have access to the key to decrypt it. SSL just encrypts the link to Google's servers - it should be basically irrelevant since the data should already be encrypted and digitally signed.

Argh, so it is not just them, but also Google who can read your texts? What do they or Google need the plaintext for?

While this is useful, it adds to the number of ways your data can leak, as to copy between devices that may be in the same room, your data will be crossing borders and potentially being exposed unencrypted on some server somewhere in another country.

I would be very reticent about pushing any remotely sensitive data over a channel like this.

Funny how they use MacBooks stack photos and iMac icons as examples and yet have neither iOS nor OSX app.

I actually thought about making an app like this. Glad someone made it! Any plans to include small file transfers (like photos)?

What's the interaction between this and password managers, which use copy/paste to get your passwords in & out?

Scatter.to seems be a much better option since it also has a history and archive function.

I just assumed this would be a web project. Open a web page on two devices and just copy/paste data. I wondered if it would use webrtc for direct, private communication.

Than I saw: oh, its "just an app". Meh. :D

Reply on news.ycombinator.com