Meet LocalSend - A Cross-Platform, Open Source Alternative to AirDrop and Quick Share!

[@_.--.--._]

A few tips after playing with this for a bit: - It works on external/mobile networks with a wireguard connection to home (enable Quick Save on your home device to auto accept) - Enabling the auto start, quick save, and minimize to tray options on desktop allows this to act as a background service - A mapped network drive can be used as the save destination So now with these set up, I have an extremely fast way to drop files on my NAS from anywhere in the world using my phone. Awesome!

[@HasanProd]

you should make a video on this

[@demorez5]

i could not get it work over wireguard. my phone and pc are on different networks, so thought this will be a solution, but they can't see each other

[@_.--.--._]

@@demorez5 dang, I think yt filtered my reply. I'll try again without ips... try adding this to your wg interface settings, and substitute WIREGUARD_SUBNET with your wg subnet address: PostUp=iptables -t nat -A POSTROUTING -s WIREGUARD_SUBNET/24 -o br0 -j MASQUERADE PostDown=iptables -t nat -D POSTROUTING -s WIREGUARD_SUBNET/24 -o br0 -j MASQUERADE

[@_.--.--._]

@@demorez5 ahhh I just tried twice and my reply got filt ered both times 😒 in lieu of my actual configs, look up the "how to set up wireguard firewall rules in linux" article on cyberciti, particularly the nat masquerade section, to add as postup/postdown wg interface settings

[@_.--.--._]

@@demorez5 look up "wireguard postup nat masquerade" I tried posting instructions here but it won't go thru

[@muddyexport5639]

I've been using LocalSend for about a year now with no issues between Mac, MS, iPhone, iPad, & Linux (several distros - desktops and Raspberry Pis). Made a contribution to devs. It is that good and that easy. And I am retired and cheap :~)

[@ayoubthegreat]

It seems great!

[@elements88xyz]

defo gonna do the same, the app is fantastic. i've always had a bit of an issue transferring files in between devices.

[@aaronplays_]

Yeah, I've been using it for about 6 months. I had only one issue where if I try to send a huge file, it gets stuck in loading the file for sending. However, you can workaround it by sharing a folder that contains the huge file. Apparently it's an issue with Flutter.

[@vla2uv]

@@aaronplays_ LocalSend, on my Android phone freezes when trying to send 1776 pictures of approximately 17GB from my phone to my Windows10 Pro PC! So, it can't handle such a large chunk of files!🤨

[@aaronplays_]

​@@vla2uv put the files in a single folder and share the folder. In the Send section, you'll find options for File, Media, Text, Folder and Apps. Select Folder and pick the folder containing your files. I also had freezing when trying to share 14GB of files. I checked the GitHub issues and found the workaround there. Apparently this is an issue with Flutter and they're working to fix it.

[@blossomcherrypink]

I like that you mention how it's developed using Flutter. It's interesting and could inspire some people who may be contemplating a multi-platform framework for their next project.

[@iamabishekbaiju]

Finally an excellent app for sharing files between devices. I was looking for so many apps to work seamlessly. Even the google quick share has slow speeds and loses the transfer while sending large files. A huge kudos for the devs.

[@vla2uv]

LocalSend, on my Android phone freezes when trying to send 1776 pictures of approximately 17GB from my phone to my Windows10 Pro PC! So, it can't handle such a large chunk of files!🤨

[@saskog8455]

Just for the sake of it you could do a sha256 sum of original and roudtrip file at the end to prove that they are the same but still great video, thanx Tim. 👍

[@romayojr]

amazing! i've been looking for something like this for a long time - you're always coming in clutch. thanks, tim!

[@ayoubthegreat]

Yes it is great. I've been using syncthing.

[@LampJustin]

Btw you can and probably should install .deb packages with apt and not dpkg. Using apt it'll automatically do the dependency resolution and install missing ones.

[@bobalachabbs]

I have been looking for something like this for a while. Thanks for bringing it some attention!!

[@ScanVisor64]

Perfect timing! I was looking for a Snapdrop/Pairdrop replacement literally just a couple of hours before you posted this. Thanks!

[@jason-budney7624]

Thank you for sharing this Tim. No more sending pics through email getting them from one device to another.

[@Reza1984_]

The magic of Flutter baby

[@WunderTechTutorials]

You always find services that I didn't know I needed. Another great video man, you're the GOAT in this space.

[@santosvision]

This is amazing!!!!! Thank you so much The fact that it doesn't require internet and it does not consume a lot of resources running in the background is amazing.

[@moelassus]

Thanks for pointing this out! I've been using Signal Note to Self to send files to myself on different platforms. Being 100% local I prefer this.

[@bilson7523]

Dude! This is great! Thanks for all the stuff you do, you have no idea how much time your channel has saved my home lab setup

[@limmel3588]

Just discovered this app from reddit, since I got a S24. Works great. Thanks!

[@berrywin]

Thank you for sharing this! I will test this app. It is a little clever app! I have three OS:es Windows, mac, Linux and an Android tablet. When I want to share files I find that just email to myself is the easiest! Now I have a good alternative!

[@Trains-With-Shane]

Excellent Timing! I actually asked about trying to do something similar on your Discord a week or two ago. I was looking for a Docker based app. But I didn't want or need the files to be stored in an internal database. I wanted them stored in a plain share. And my usage case was iPhone to CIFS Share then to Windows. I think this solution will be the best out of everything that I've found so far as i'd looked at NextCloud, SyncThing, etc. Although like you if they end up with a Docker container or some provision to set up an "auto accept" that would be even better for my usage case.

[@craw0967]

I just checked it out. There is a “quick save” setting that allows you to set up a device to auto accept incoming files.

[@briankaler6147]

pretty cool, sent a file to my steamdeck (from windows) and only took me about 5 minutes to get setup and running, very smooth. speed is pretty decent over my wifi @~ 15MB/sec which is about half of most of my SMB transfers, but you can’t really beat the ease of this.

[@ZeerakImran]

yeah the speed is surprisingly slow. It may be device related or something going on with network config but around 6months ago or more, I was transferring at 55-65MB/s. It's now mostly 15MB/s to 22MB/s. I have tried many devices with linux, mac os, windows, android, iPhone and there isn't any pattern which lets me know how fast the transfer will be. Generally it will be 15-20MB/s but sometimes on certain devices it starts at and maintains 55-65MB/s consistently every time for the entire duration of large transfers. LocalSend does also crash sometimes and does need a better notification system which lets the user know if the transfer stopped and so on. But it's an amazing app with no ads and is open-source. I know theoretical maximums are very different but with wifi cards at 150MB/s (1200mbps) and disk read and write speeds at 2000MB/s+, getting 50MB/s transfer rate should be the base line otherwise something is going wrong. I have experimented with firewalls (on/off), ethernet on one device and wireless on other, wireless to wireless (wifi 6, wifi 5), encryption (on/off). Interestingly, one device on ethernet to router and other device wireless had no noticeable impact whatsoever on transfer speed or reliability. I want wireless speeds for transfers to improve as well as their reliability big time but most of all I want full fibre installed in my location ffs. 200mbps for a p2p connection isn't really decent at all considering 200mbps is so easily achievable between 2 devices (one could be on the other side of the Earth) with an internet connection. 1gbps is easily do-able between 2 devices anywhere in the world. So 200mbps p2p, there's definitely something going wrong here. Some sort of bottleneck which I'm sure can easily be corrected.

[@simuman]

Wow, great video. Aways been bug bear for me about sending files locally. Definitely gonna give this a go. Thx for all the work done.

[@faizannabi7540]

This is the app that I have been searching for a long time. I hope it stays open source-free. Thanks, man. :)

[@ernestgalvan9037]

..‘I hope it stays open source-free’ .. yeah, heaven forbid the software author/developer might make a buck or two off the 100,000’s of users. And users wonder why so many ‘FREEE!!’ Apps end up dead. “But It’s FREEE!”..

[@faizannabi7540]

@@ernestgalvan9037 Yea, don't mind paying a buck or 2 to the developer.

[@alexandzors]

I've been using the quick share app from google on my windows machines but this looks neat. I swear everytime i watch a video from you I end up adding more software to my list of "check out" lol.

[@nyceyes]

Hello. I'm hard-core Fedora, Android (and reluctantly Windows) and I never ran into this useful app. I never liked uploading & downloading files to a cloud drive as a copy conduit. This is excellent. Thank you for this video uploader. 💚

[@flyingrichfirearms]

BIG THANKS!!!! I have over the years been an Android Phone User and Mac Desktop. Many Apps work and then break! This is great!

[@TechnoTim]

@@flyingrichfirearms i just used it a few days ago to transfer my videos to my mac from my phone!

[@Equality-and-Liberty]

Thanks for this nice video Tim. I will give localSend a try. I'm already using Projectsend to send files to external locations, so this will make my file management complete.

[@8xpdhpckkg]

I think it speaks volumes for us nerds when we're super excited about sharing files locally xD Great video, thank you! Installilng this as we speak^^

[@MarcBehar]

This is great, was using KDE Connnect for a long time but it stopped working on windows a while back, this should do fine for my use

[@luckychukiye8743]

Works great Was wanting to transfer audio books to my laptop for a trip and then be able to transfer photos when I get back Thank you

[@meme-d2h1g]

Thank you for this one Tim! Excellent solution.

[@4evermetalhead79]

Would be cool if it had a pair key between machines. In the office space where there are snoopy colleagues (acting like 5 year olds) would be just trying to send you files all the time etc. a pairing key would possibly keep anyone else outside of the sharing circle as it wouldn’t be discoverable, and just leaving in those who have to be in the know, something like a hidden network.

[@NotDtech]

or just a small 4 digit number just like a bluetooth pairing code, just to verify that you are getting it from a legitimate person not a 5y/o

[@reneerees3238]

This app worked like a charm to transfer photos from my Android phone to Macbook. Thanks so much!

[@IgotLoot]

pick a side 💀

[@anthonycruciani939]

​@@IgotLootHe did he picked the best platforms, MacOS and Android.

[@xfabiosoft]

Does it require to stay on same WiFi network or can be an ad hoc connection like airdrop?

[@ZeerakImran]

It requires you to be on the same network connection. I think it uses the network connection to transfer data p2p. It might just use the network to identify devices available on the network before being able to establish a connection between them like airdrop but I don't think it does unfortunately. Its dependant on the network sadly.

[@swistak0220]

It's nice but you still need the devices to be on the same network. This would be a lot better if someone finally implements Nerby Share protocol (with WiFi direct and Bluetooth) on other platforms

[@RogerioPereiradaSilva77]

To transfer large files over Bluetooth is just not a good idea even if it turns out to be feasible. BT file transfer is okay for small amounts of data only.

[@swistak0220]

@@RogerioPereiradaSilva77 That's right, however when not on the same network devices can find each other over bluetooth and negotiate wifi direct connection. That's how Nerby Share works on Android

[@matthiasnott]

Excellent advice, works beautifully! Had to restart my IPhone to make it appear in the share menu.

[@joe-skeen]

Thanks for a nontrivial demo! Many app reviews just show a trivial hello world use case and don't demonstrate a cross platform complicated scenario.

[@TechySpeaking]

Hell yeah, LocalSend is awesome, glad it's getting recognition.

[@Viking8888]

Thank you for this Tim, I've wanted exactly this, for years!

[@amazonbox1115]

Super helpful, been using some random app on the appstore to send photos from my phone over to my PC and it worked okay, but this is way nicer and has no ads.

[@CuriousG21]

Just set-up an SMB share. I can access everything on my file server on every device. With a VPN server hosted on my LAN, I can tunnel in from anywhere in the world.

[@lukchem]

Since this is only on the Local Network and not Peer to peer like AirDrop, wouldn’t it be simpler to just enable File Sharing over the network directly from the operating system? I wouldn’t use this to send stuff between my own devices, but still it’s an option to send stuff to friends without giving them full access to all your files I guess.

[@da46-kan]

takes time but its exactly what i needed, thanks bro

[@jimmyscott5144]

You should look at video quality and hash to see if they stay the same

[@BladeWDR]

A neat application. I've just been using SyncThing to accomplish a similar task, but this would be good for one off file transfers.

[@JacksonATrade]

Oh this is going to be soooooooo much easier than plugging in a data cable and navigating through the file system.

[@vincebath8171]

Happy accident I came across your channel. Great content, thanks, this fills the role for my music project which integrates cross platform devices and os's. I'm going to watch some of your other videos and see what else I can learn.

[@TechnoTim]

@@vincebath8171 thanks! I just used this to transfer almost 40 GB of data from my iPhone and my Pixel phone to my Mac Studio!

[@3lementa1]

This one truly a gem. So glad I found it.

[@alanjrobertson]

Wow, looks like a lovely clean app. Great demo - have installed already! 🎉

[@NassiC21]

It seems that there is no info at all about the file before you accept to reciev it? Im not sure i like that. I know you are prob just sending to your self or a friend/family member, but still would be nice to see file name, size, hash etc.

[@andreaseriksson8121]

Thank you. This is the tool I have been looking for.

[@otreeson5305]

Since syncthing doesn't have an app for iPhone this would be a great addition.

[@gennypalumbo9670]

OMG! Thank you so much! I was looking for this for years! I got Macs and Windows machine at home and my office, and I hate iPhone, i use a Galaxy S22 there was no way to get something like this!

[@junialter]

Will this also work across different subnets or is it only relying on broadcast / multicast?

[@sirlaotse]

This is how everything should work. Great app!!! The best of a kind

[@HandBuilt]

Really great solution for transferring between devices that was a pain before.

[@IEnjoyCreatingVideos]

Great video Tim! Thanks for sharing it with us!💖👍😎JP

[@EricBrowley]

This video came at an awesome time, I was struggling to find any solution.

[@strangetoucane]

Also another tip You can use this app with tailscale as well since it uses IPs to connect i just figured out that it can transfer files without even on the same since you are on the tailnet there it’s really good tool for remote transfer as well Thanks.

[@dzaxys4643]

Sweet i often find sounds i like for making music with on video i download them in the moment on my phone but connecting the usb cable to send to my pc is way too much hassle this does the job perfectly thanks

[@mjdevlog]

such an amazing presentation, thanks for this.

[@MiroslavIvanovimbmf]

In my watch list for some time, thank you for testing it for me 🙂

[@omagadavid9923]

Do the devices always have to be in the same WiFi network

[@elements88xyz]

nice one dude! really practical litte tool. thank you.

[@LocustDay]

not as easy as it sounds. It seems, the firewall settings blocking the connections and i don't know how to fix this. Any suggestions?

[@CaliTexan]

If you have the USB cord plugged into your phone and laptop, then that's probably why. Because I was having the same problem. After I stopped doing that, it was able to find a nearby device.

[@LocustDay]

@@CaliTexan thank you for this suggestion but i havn't plugged the phone into the computer. I also couldn't establish a connection between my phone and my tablet so i think it has something to do with the firewall settings

[@vla2uv]

My understanding is that Local Send doesn't work in WAN/Internet, but what about in LAN, to at least two devices at the same time? Is it possible?😮 Later edit: can it be used the application as a portable app without being installed?! Well, it is very important for those who use the company PC and can't install applications since it's needed for administrative rights?! One more thing, though... LocalSend, on my Android phone freezes when trying to send 1776 pictures of approximately 17GB from my phone to my Windows10 Pro PC! So, it can't handle such a large chunk of files!🤨

[@whummer98]

Not sure if anyone mentioned it, but have you run checksums on the files to make sure they are identical? Probably are but its far better than playing video.

[@virctual]

i cant find a nearby device, and both devices are on the same wifi. pls help!

[@CaliTexan]

Do you have the USB cord plugged into your laptop and phone? If you do, that's probably why. Because I had the same problem. After I stopped doing that, it was able to find a nearby device.

[@remy44444]

I am not quite sure why not stick up with with Android's Quick Share since it officially supported on Windows, open sourced and imported to Linux MacOS etc.

[@miriamramstudio3982]

Fantastic. Will install right away. Thanks

[@mediocritycentral]

When transferring photos and videos from iOS, is all video/photo metadeta retained? Or stripped?

[@ChristopherJohnsonIsAwesome]

This is really cool, but I'm happy I have a Synology NAS; it solves this problem seamlessly regardless of OS

[@jaygreentree4394]

Already loving this software. Its very fast.

[@rootuj]

hey thanks a lot i wanted something similar as well, i ended up finding syncthing for my solution but this works great, since syncthing more or less like permanent way of syncing within your devices this works great for let's suppose sending something from my friends device

[@samys288]

Pretty good video and application, thank you

[@jackipiegg]

does localsend work without having the same wifi connected? e.g. transfer files outside without wifi.

[@RogerioPereiradaSilva77]

Short answer is no. The long answer is maybe, assuming you have a properly set up VPN. Out of all of these easy file transfer solutions, SyncThing s the only one that will work over the internet as well as it does on a LAN.

[@kingstonchi]

There must be a common 'river' flowing between the Windows, iOS, Android, Linux, and etc., right ? Is that the WIFI ? that makes it all happen interactively ? Sorry, I hear nothing said about this part .. just want to make sure ..

[@seantellsit1431]

interesting. This won't work if wifi and Lan devices are on a different vlan as this this app requires mDNS.

[@9SMTM6]

Wait, I just learned from this that the pairdrop repo is gone... I did find an issue about this. The author of pairdrop made an answer there, under another account. Since he was able to point the about section at the official pairdrop instance to that issue I trust it's them. I would certainly prefer to keep pairdrop. You can at the very least use it and most likely also install it anywhere thanks to it being a PWA, and you can optionally share over the WWW, which is something that localsend lacks. Yeah, it might not work without internet (not sure it doesn't actually, I believe it also uses mDNS, and when installed as PWA it might have offline capability) but I don't know many times where I've got wireless but no internet.

[@AlphaDeFcOn4]

I am using Localsend but when I transfer files from windows to my Android phone got 15mb/s max speed and I do from my Poco F5 to my desktop I got 35mb/s. Windows 10 Ethernet port gigabit. Poco F5 using 5ghz band. How can I increase speed from my windows ? Should be fast speeds over the local network... Please help me.

[@rigierish3807]

Why not wanting to use the Flatpak version? You don't have to take care of the dependencies and it works as good as any other packaging format.

[@TechnoTim]

You’re right. Really just a habit and most other things I install aren’t flatpaks so I don’t want to mix package managers!

[@rigierish3807]

@@TechnoTim I can understand that. Personally, I eventually gave up the idea of sticking to one package manager: I mainly use pacman (Arch), I have quite a lot of AUR, but I also use some flatpak, and only a few Appimages. It's less "clean" but it's much more practical to handle everything because I don't want to install (and update) things manually and not remember or know how to uninstall them if I ever want to.

[@RandomFandomOfficial]

Flatpak is bloated shit.

[@syedmaaz3510]

Unable to send 6gb Video from android to apple say success with error and show cache file folder in iphone

[@hediinn125]

Just a heads up blur is tipicly nondestructive

[@ThePandaGuitar]

love the vid! thanks tim

[@JustinReinhart]

Literally the only thing I want to know is what is the default filename when you send a file from iOS to the desktop. Is it a date and time?

[@Raiserre]

I have snapdrop installed on my home server and using it well, but it only works in certain situations and I am looking for a replacement. Any suggestions for a good replacement that can also be used on an external network would be appreciated, of course.

[@jorge_runs]

Kudos! Great find.

[@physbuzz]

Nice! I use unison file synchronizer for my linux systems, configured to run as a daemon on startup. I normally don't have a problem just using Dropbox, but sometimes I'm running a simulation and I have tens or hundreds of gigs of video frames that I want to pull to my main pc. Maybe I'll try localsend next time I'm working on something like that!

[@saigon66]

I can't send a file from my andoird phone to Google Chromecast tv.

[@muawwazahmad101]

I transfered files (videos) from windows 10 to Iphone 15 Pro Max. The photos app does not show the videos. Don't know why?

[@anasouardini]

Also I wish there is CLI for it, so I can monitor my PC from my phone while it's compiling my C++ projects.

[@Mincaatje]

Does anyone know how to select multiple files from an IOS device? I have to tap on every single photo/video one at a time, I can't select multiple together like when you select more photo's in a row.

[@arcane_spark]

What about KDE Connect?

[@Breeegz]

I use KDE connect, and I thought the same thing. I think the real benefit to this over KDE Connect in regards to file sharing, is the cross platform. I don't think there's a KDE Connect app for Windows/MAC. KDE Connect wins when you want to do cool stuff between your phone and Linux Desktop.

[@Goldmaster]

@@Breeegz kde connect is on windows store and there is a nightly mac os program

[@justinbaker53]

64MB/s or 512Mbps is slow for a gigabit connection over your lan...was the linux machine or mac using a spinning disk?

[@ismailibrahim9630]

i dont know what im doing wrong but my devices on the same network cant find each other using localsend apps both on windows 11 and android phone

[@triumphant_54]

I tried it, and it worked, but it wasn't fast in my experience. From S 24 ultra to silicon Mac

[@chrisumali9841]

Thanks for the demo and info, awesome. I am sending you a Thumbs Up! LOL

[@marcinbrzozowski2091]

What about Warpinator? I'm using it on Android, Win 11 and Linux boxes

[@asishreddy7729]

LocalSend is amazing but it doesn’t work if you’re not on WiFi. Both the sending and receiving device needs to be on the same WiFi, if you’re just nearby but not on WiFi it doesn’t work. For example, if you and your friends are on a road trip and want to share pictures to your android friends from your iPhone, local send won’t work if you’re on the road even if you’re close to each other. It works only if you’re connected to the same WiFi network. AirDrop works even without WiFi.

[@muhammadalifdanielbinmohdh3188]

There always a whatsapp or telegram...

[@JorgeALXNDR]

use AirDrop then... the whole point of the video is to show an alternative that doesn't go to the Cloud and is cross-plataform. AirDrop is not cross-plataform. I'm using an app that emulates the _Nearby Sharing_ feature of Windows on my Android and works really well (which is a surprise because I've tried to use theis option between Windows 11 machines and it never works), most of what I do is inside my own network. I was using the former _Nearby Share by Google_ on my PC but it's so buggy and after it has merged with Quick Share it no longer works for me like never.

[@hashir4487]

What about wifi and hotspot ? Btw pc and Android it's works , Just curious does it works or not

[@cccccc864]

What about something that doesn't required a shared wifi connection like quickshare or airdrop?

[@tljstewart]

does this actually use your wifi network, or just device wifi and bluetooth. for instance, AirDrop creates a peer-to-peer connection

[@orafaelgf]

great app, thanks video. how use on ubuntu server?