Show HN: It's 2022 and sharing files from Android to Mac is still a pain
I always found sharing files from my Android phone to my Mac a pain. I wanted to have a way to share my photos, videos, documents etc from my phone directly to my MBP, without having to upload anything to the 'cloud' or some messaging app. Those ways tend to be less secure and fairly slow.
Because of this I made this little app you see on the video that enables you to share the files directly from your phone to your laptop. I have been using it for a while now for personal use and it works really well!
The app was recently made available to everyone. You can try it out for free via https://ubidrop.com
Happy to answer any questions you might have.
63 comments
[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 132 ms ] thread"not my problem" and "hey, what if I said we sell more units inside our ecology if we make this a walled garden" come to mind.
Select a file, tap on "share", tap on "bluetooth", choose a device, wait a few seconds, done.
1. It's clunky 2. It's slow 3. It's unreliable
Anything that has a better UX than Bluetooth file sharing is a win for me.
Hell, I'm even listening to my Mac's music on the TV via Bluetooth as I write this.
I can't make it work, the file just doesn't get through.
Contrary to my sibling commenters, it did just work. A prompt appeared on MacOS asking if I wanted to accept the connection request, then asking if I wanted to accept a filee. I agreed, a download progress bar appeared until it was finished, and when it was done, the file was in the Downloads folder.
Wow, it was incredibly slow, though. Transfer rate ~50kB/s, about 500x slower than uploading the file to a cloud server somewhere and downloading it again. 2000x slower than local Wifi. Distance between devices: about 60cm. Time to transfer 1 photo: 10 seconds, after starting the download.
The Android UI was unhelpful for finding the Bluetooth option to share to. The Share icon showed 5 share methods (none of them Bluetooth, one of them "Quick Share" to "nearby Galaxy devices", it's even more specific than Android-only), plus 5 contacts-with-methods (none of them useful: SMS and WhatsApp, and I don't even have WhatsApp activated on this phone), plus a different kind of button for "Nearby Share" (something to do with nearby people in your Contacts, which doesn't explain how it does that so I assume some cloud service I'd rather not use). Finding "Bluetooth" involved some hardly discoverable horizontal scrolling with no visual affordance, using a different UI than the share options listed from other apps.
But it did work, extremely slowly.
It's not obvious, but some of the other share options use Bluetooth to set up the connection then Wifi to transfer the files, perhaps about ~2000x faster. Some supposedly use local Wifi alone, no Bluetooth required. Unfortunately I've never had success with any of them, so I can't confirm if any of them actually work as advertised. A few years ago I spent nearly an hour trying to all the different methods on the phone I had, to send a collection of photos from Android to MacOS without using an internet service, and nothing worked. Each built-in sharing method failed in some way, and standard Bluetooth file transfer was too slow. In the end I gave up and transferred just a few of the photos the slow way. It is striking (and absurd) that cloud services run much faster than local transfer - when both devices have access to a usable internet connection.
I spent a few months using Android and then went back to iPhone because it’s so hard to get Android OS working with MacOS. So many incompatible or non-smooth integrations between them.
Glad to see Ubidrop exist. I bet it will improve life of an Android user a lot.
Congrats on the launch. Dan
[1] https://snapdrop.net
[1] https://tailscale.com/kb/1106/taildrop
If you ever need to transfer lots of files (for example while making backups), my recommendation is to use an FTP server app on your phone and then download the files on your PC (explorer.exe has native FTP support but use can use Filezilla or a different FTP client too).
How so? On Windows and Linux I just plug it in and it shows up in my file browser. Mac is the only one that is difficult.
Sharing files from an iPhone to a computer on the other hand...
Vendor lock-in has its upsides!
A few years ago I would have hated this because of vendor lock in. As a user, this is just sooo convenient and easy.
I totally disagree, one of my biggest frustrations with iOS is how awful it is to share files between the it and desktop. Android phones are generally USB mass storage devices, I can just plug it in via USB and it becomes an attached storage drive on any OS. Apple made the decision that it wouldn't use a standard like that, so i need to install iTunes (wtf?!), and that only works on platforms that iTunes supports.
I have no idea why you think FTP is faster than wired transfer. That sounds awful.
1. How is it different from using KDE Connect (Android) -> Soduto (Mac)? What is it doing differently?
2. Can I use this app offline that is, without internet connection. If yes, then how?
3. I see that this is a paid app. Are you planning to add other features too? (Find my phone, browsing files remotely on my phone, incoming call notifications etc.)
1. Ubidrop focuses on getting the technical bits out of the way. The focus is sharing files without having to signin, exchange pin codes or do any sort of pairing.
2. The app works 100% offline. All files are transferred over your local network and nothing is shared over the Internet.
3. Right now I am focusing on nailing the file sharing experience. Not sure what I will focus on next. Those things change as the project evolves.
Making the app work without the need of WiFi is one of the most requested features and in the todo list
"App update is needed to send to that device".
Hmm what, so I'm not installing the latest APK?
The latest one is 1.10.0 and you can get it from https://www.ubidrop.com (until Google approves the play store one)
When I want to send a file, I just put it in Documents. Works over WiFi or internet. Bonus: the file is replicated on a server, so it's available and in an easy to find location.