I don't know if this is a known thing but my problem is in the reverse - getting things from my computer to the phone.
Things like screenshots, gifs, webms etc from my computer
to any phone anywhere, without first uploading to imgur
or Google Drive / Dropbox / some other Live File-sharing service.
This would take care of that use case as well. It's a webapp that saves only a single file that can only be downloaded once. The idea is that the URL is only known to you. Pretty neat idea for personal file sharing.
I wrote a little tool to do this. It fires up Python's SimpleHTTPServer and presents the URL to the file with a QR code. Works great as long as the phone and laptop are on the same network.
For the other way I use the open source Android app "Share via HTTP" - it does the same thing.
Here's the shitty bash script (I stole the urlencode part from Stackexchange): http://termbin.com/3b04
I use the File Commander Android app. It has a great feature where it starts up a web server hosting a file explorer like interface of your phone, where you can download, upload, delete, move and such.
I have a mac and an Android phone. I use Pushbullet to send links, paste screenshots and it appears you can send files back and forth, too (I've never done it).
Very nice idea. Since I'm a newb at PHP, I would prefer it to be in a language I can hack in, but this is a clever way to solve one of the most annoying problems in the world :-)
Quick question; why not split the PHP file into index.html and upload.php (or whatever)? I get that simplicity is key ("This one file does everything!"), but you could use that to build a couple more features (maybe some sort of PIN protection). Just throwing some ideas out there, cool utility nonetheless.
Edit: And by splitting the file you could allow other people to build little frontends like native apps or browser extensions.
Annoyingly, AirDrop works directly over wifi, meaning that you can't use it to transfer files between an iPhone (connected to router Foo via wifi) and a Mac that's 1. Ethernet-wired to the same router Foo, and 2. has no wifi support.
I'm not sure if (Intel-era) Macs without wireless cards/chipsets exist outside of Hackintoshes, but they're pretty common as Hackintoshes.
Well you’re using a product built with specific hardware in mind with totally different, unsupported hardware. Apple doesn’t sell any devices without WiFi.
For us AirDrop only works sometimes. It cannot be trusted to work.
We have two ipads, two iphones, two Macs. Some new, some old. In general AirDrop only works between some devices, depending on device ages and (I guess ;-) the moon in conjugation with Apple's stock index.
If it works, its only after waiting a while, switching BT off and on (maybe repeat that), meanwhile doing some praying...
This is very cool! But you need to have a device with a reachable public IP address. For those that don't, Micah Lee's https://onionshare.org/ is a decent option. But routinely, I just GnuPG encrypt stuff, and use https://file.io/.
Is there a solution that doesn't require you to type out the tedious URL http://asxmi4q6i7pajg2b.onion/egg-cain [1] for example, on your computer or your phone (when doing the reverse -- computer to phone) ?
Sometimes its not even a file but a block of text that you want quickly transferred from your computer to your phone or vice-versa that shouldnt
require the use of a third party service.
I'm stunned to learn that there's really no such tool that lets you push URLs / Links / Text / GIFs / Screenshots between devices that you own & have on you.
There's QPush which has a Chrome extension and an app but really nothing else close to what I describe. [2]
Well, if you have reachable public IPs, you can just SCP. Without reachable public IPs, you can setup Tor onions and OnionCat on both devices, and then SCP via OnionCat. Once you put the OnionCat /48 IPv6 in your hosts files, you just use hostnames.
For block-of-text transfer between computer and phone I use qrencode [1] to encode text on my computer as a QR code, Barcode Scanner [2] on my Android phone to read the text or generate a QR code from text on the phone, and QtQR [3] to scan a code on the phone screen using my laptop webcam.
The QR code detection in QtQR is a bit uncomfortable (you need to press a key to confirm, while holding the phone into the camera) and requires me to set my phone screen to maximum brightness, but otherwise it works quite well. It doesn't really solve the problem for large files like images, but I have successfully used it with long HN comments I started on my phone but wanted to finish on my laptop.
Moreover, you can bind to one of these IPs and then it's only accessible from the ZeroTier network. If you own a domain name, then point a subdomain at that IP (which should be RFC1918-compliant) and then you've got files.mydomain.com only accessible via ZeroTier.
Thanks. I'll check it out. I've played some with tinc and peervpn, and an old Russian one whose name I don't recall. This sounds somewhat like that. But maybe much more polished.
sharedrop.io works great for devices on the same wifi network.
There is also pushbullet - I generally take screenshots and like to transfer to desktop. I can 'share' a screenshot I took using pushbullet and it will appear in a new browser tab in my desktop, and then I can save it.
From what I gather, it's a php page. You upload 1??? file or download that file - for that you have to know the URL. So it's rather x<->anyone who knows the URL.
Not really. To do a fair comparison, the three examples that I've listed are things you have to do each time (finding USB cable, or logging in the webmail, or opening Dropbox, etc.)
Here installing the PHP on a server is something you do only once for all.
Yes but not really. Imagine it is uploaded on phone. The URL is https://send.firefox.com/share/bec9e0497c. Will you spend 30 seconds writing this URL in the URL bar of your computer browser? (oh no, I made a typo in the URL, let's start again...).
>Will you spend 30 seconds writing this URL in the URL bar of your computer browser? (oh no, I made a typo in the URL, let's start again...)
Firefox lets you send a tab/link to another device (if you use Firefox sync). No typing necessary.
>Yopp is 7 atomic actions and no more
I like the UX well enough, but calling it just 7 actions completely ignores that you need to have an internet facing webserver with PHP, configured. Many of us here could arrange that pretty easily, but it greatly adds to complexity versus using an existing web-service.
Oh that's interesting, I didn't know that about Firefox sync. How does it work? You connect, once for all (with a login/pwd?) 2 browsers (e.g. phone Firefox and computer Firefox)?
Then you go to send.firefox.com, on phone, and you upload a file. And then how do I get the tab with the right URL on the PC? I guess I open Firefox, and then how can I see "tabs opened on my phone"? (Would you have a screenshot?)
Yes, you set up Sync once on each device, with a password.
You can configure what you want to sync (bookmarks, tabs, preferences, ...). I only sync bookmarks, those just appear automatically. I never tried syncing tabs. I see now there is a "Sync now" command in the old Alt-menu, and a "Synced Tabs" window in the new hamburger-menu, but I never used those.
You're not alone. I have High Sierra and iOS 11 and still find it to be finicky. Of course, it was worse with prior OSes, but even now I find it takes a long time for devices to "find" each other when transferring from iOS to MacOS, or vice-versa. I seriously end up using Dropbox sometimes because Airdrop won't work.
I may be not using the latest and greatest, but email works pretty well for me... if I need more than 10mb, I use wetransfer. Sure it goes through the internet, but yes I don't want to think more than 1second about how to do this.
I tried with WeTransfer and we have 10 taps/clicks + 16 alphanumeric characters to type on keyboard:
Open browser on phone [1 tap], Open wetransfer page [1 tap if in bookmarks], "Take me to free" [1 tap], "I agree" [1 tap],
"Add your files" [1 tap], Choose the file [1 action], "..." round icon [1 tap], "Send as link" [1 tap], "Transfer" [1 tap].
Open browser on computer [1 double click], write URL [at least 16 alphanumeric keystrokes], e.g. we.tl/aqNXmKTjFO
KDE connect really is a "killer app"; there's nothing like it on Windows or Gnome.
Someone's texted me a URL and I don't want to open it on the tiny phone screen - just long press the url, tap copy and hit ctrl-v in kde.
Every time I do this I feel a little tingle of joy, probably to balance all the frustration I've felt trying to move things between devices in the past.
Want to move pictures off the phone? Just Share -> Share with KDE connect -> accept transfer request on PC and it's done. It also controls media players nice and smoothly. My single gripe is the lack of a dark color scheme in the app.
If you count everything (opening Airdroid app on phone, choosing the file, opening airdroid on PC, etc.), how many actions (including every click / tap) does it require? See https://github.com/josephernest/Yopp#minimalist-ux.
Was looking for something ready-to-use and simple (without login or giving too much details) for the situations when AirDrop or PushBullet <3 is not an option.
I remember in the good old days of flip phones, I just use Bluetooth OBEX to locally transfer the file(s) to another Bluetooth enabled device. It’s a bit slow but otherwise works fine. It was simple too—just select the picture, hit send via Bluetooth, select the receiving Bluetooth device, and hit Send. All these file transfer over the cloud using google/Dropbox/amazon/etc for local devices feel like Rube Goldberg to me...
How do you transfer a bunch on pictures rather than just one ?
I just go in the gallery, select the pictures and share them with Box. Would be the same with Dropbox, can't you keep the connection active on both sides? (no need to type the password)
72 comments
[ 109 ms ] story [ 2463 ms ] threadi.e. "upload with phone, get the file on computer"
Things like screenshots, gifs, webms etc from my computer to any phone anywhere, without first uploading to imgur or Google Drive / Dropbox / some other Live File-sharing service.
Know of a simple tool that does that?
Also, there was a 'modem' implementation in a browser posted a few days ago, that could be used to share URLs from phone to PC (if the PC has a mic).
Exfiltrating data can be non-nefarious.
2. Bluetooth
For the other way I use the open source Android app "Share via HTTP" - it does the same thing.
Here's the shitty bash script (I stole the urlencode part from Stackexchange): http://termbin.com/3b04
It also works in this direction with Yopp.
Works surprisingly well.
(I totally do the Google Drive thing right now)
Quick question; why not split the PHP file into index.html and upload.php (or whatever)? I get that simplicity is key ("This one file does everything!"), but you could use that to build a couple more features (maybe some sort of PIN protection). Just throwing some ideas out there, cool utility nonetheless.
Edit: And by splitting the file you could allow other people to build little frontends like native apps or browser extensions.
I'm not sure if (Intel-era) Macs without wireless cards/chipsets exist outside of Hackintoshes, but they're pretty common as Hackintoshes.
;-)
We have two ipads, two iphones, two Macs. Some new, some old. In general AirDrop only works between some devices, depending on device ages and (I guess ;-) the moon in conjugation with Apple's stock index.
If it works, its only after waiting a while, switching BT off and on (maybe repeat that), meanwhile doing some praying...
1. https://www.sharedrop.io
Sometimes its not even a file but a block of text that you want quickly transferred from your computer to your phone or vice-versa that shouldnt require the use of a third party service.
I'm stunned to learn that there's really no such tool that lets you push URLs / Links / Text / GIFs / Screenshots between devices that you own & have on you.
There's QPush which has a Chrome extension and an app but really nothing else close to what I describe. [2]
[1] Onionshare - How to Use
https://github.com/micahflee/onionshare/wiki
[2] QPush
http://qpush.me/en/
The QR code detection in QtQR is a bit uncomfortable (you need to press a key to confirm, while holding the phone into the camera) and requires me to set my phone screen to maximum brightness, but otherwise it works quite well. It doesn't really solve the problem for large files like images, but I have successfully used it with long HN comments I started on my phone but wanted to finish on my laptop.
[1] https://fukuchi.org/works/qrencode/ There's a Debian package you can just apt-get install
[2] https://f-droid.org/packages/com.google.zxing.client.android...
[3] https://launchpad.net/qr-tools
There is also pushbullet - I generally take screenshots and like to transfer to desktop. I can 'share' a screenshot I took using pushbullet and it will appear in a new browser tab in my desktop, and then I can save it.
They should add:
- Run a static file server but huh, I don't have a full blown web server and/or php installed on my work station.
Seriously, I think syncthing provides a rather good solution for this problem. You have to install it on every machine though.
Saying "I can run `python -m SimpleHTTPServer`" doesn't help- it's not the problem they seem to be solving. Or am I wrong?
> - Run a static file server but ...
Not really. To do a fair comparison, the three examples that I've listed are things you have to do each time (finding USB cable, or logging in the webmail, or opening Dropbox, etc.)
Here installing the PHP on a server is something you do only once for all.
Once again, the idea with Yopp is 7 atomic actions and no more: https://github.com/josephernest/Yopp#minimalist-ux
Firefox lets you send a tab/link to another device (if you use Firefox sync). No typing necessary.
>Yopp is 7 atomic actions and no more
I like the UX well enough, but calling it just 7 actions completely ignores that you need to have an internet facing webserver with PHP, configured. Many of us here could arrange that pretty easily, but it greatly adds to complexity versus using an existing web-service.
Then you go to send.firefox.com, on phone, and you upload a file. And then how do I get the tab with the right URL on the PC? I guess I open Firefox, and then how can I see "tabs opened on my phone"? (Would you have a screenshot?)
Screenshots: https://imgur.com/a/QkhNQ
https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/features/sync/
Instead of Airdrop I'm using Telegram messager and share files to myself. It's quick and I'm always have access to them in the cloud.
https://wetransfer.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/202603916-H...
I tried with WeTransfer and we have 10 taps/clicks + 16 alphanumeric characters to type on keyboard:
You can easily share files in both directions and you have a shared clipboard which makes exchanging short texts and urls very simple.
Every time I do this I feel a little tingle of joy, probably to balance all the frustration I've felt trying to move things between devices in the past.
Want to move pictures off the phone? Just Share -> Share with KDE connect -> accept transfer request on PC and it's done. It also controls media players nice and smoothly. My single gripe is the lack of a dark color scheme in the app.
woof -i <ip_address> -p <port> <filename>
termux: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.termux&hl=...
woof: http://www.home.unix-ag.org/simon/woof.html
Edit:
1. Allows directory upload/download (tar/gzip/bzip2 compressed)
2. Local file server (doesn't go over the internet)
3. Allows upload form (-U option)
4. Allows file to be served <count> number of times (-c option)
Termux is also on F-droid, thankfully for those without Google Services:
https://f-droid.org/packages/com.termux/
Partner 'still' has failed to liberate photos from smartphone.
Was looking for something ready-to-use and simple (without login or giving too much details) for the situations when AirDrop or PushBullet <3 is not an option.
Hastily written code code is available at https://github.com/mustakimali/JustA.ML Learned a thing or two about end-to-end encryption while working on that.
put on old man’s hat
I remember in the good old days of flip phones, I just use Bluetooth OBEX to locally transfer the file(s) to another Bluetooth enabled device. It’s a bit slow but otherwise works fine. It was simple too—just select the picture, hit send via Bluetooth, select the receiving Bluetooth device, and hit Send. All these file transfer over the cloud using google/Dropbox/amazon/etc for local devices feel like Rube Goldberg to me...
done ranting