this post was submitted on 12 Apr 2024
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Inspired by Apple's Airdrop

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[–] [email protected] 35 points 8 months ago (3 children)

I found LocalSend to be significantly more reliable than Snapdrop. Also it doesn't require hosting.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 8 months ago (1 children)

But can you use it to send to a device where you can't install stuff?

[–] [email protected] -2 points 8 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 6 points 8 months ago

If you want to send something to a computer in school or a work PC or something without admin rights.

snapdrop / sharedrop work in browser, without any installation, and that's the point. As much as I hate web apps, sometimes they are your only option.

I agree that localsend is great when you need to exchange files between your devices often, but when you quickly need to send a file to someone's PC without admin rights, snapdrop and sharedrop are a faster way to achieve that.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago

It’s easier to get someone to visit a website than to make them download an app

[–] [email protected] 8 points 8 months ago (1 children)

I prefer Sharedrop it allows transfer between networks and has a better up time

[–] [email protected] 11 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (2 children)

Also PairDrop. I tested a few of these sharing apps and found this one to be slightly better for reasons that I can no longer remember.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago
[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Are you selfhosting it? Were you able to set it up to work even with devices on different networks with turn/coturn server?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago

Not self hosting - just using the web app.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Oh, snapdrop is back? The site has been unreachable for years to me

[–] [email protected] 5 points 8 months ago

It's been so unreliable. I switched to PairDrop.net, a fork that works just as well and has better uptime.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 8 months ago (1 children)

I currently use KDE Connect. Is it similar?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago (1 children)

If I don't remember wrong, KDE Connect needs to be installed on both the devices you need to transfer file/text to/from, with Snapdrop (and PairDrop) you just need to selfhost it (or use the official website) without the need to install anything and they *can *work even when sender and receiver are on different network

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago (1 children)

thanks.

does it allow filesystem expose as well, or just sending files?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago

Just sending files

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago

For people not satisfied with the reliability:

Me too, at the beginning.
But I have never had a problem when it is Android to Android.

After tinkering for a long while I found out that:
The connection is much more reliable after allowing mDNS in my firewall settings.

I don't know if this is related. If it is, I hope it was mentioned somewhere so users don't get frustrated when the app doesn't work.

In my OS, mDNS is blocked by default for public networks. (and every network is a public network by default.)
The firewall is preinstalled (firewalld); the silver lining is that I understand more about firewalld and appreciate its customizability.
Before this, I was only able to use ufw.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (2 children)
[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago

There is no limit implemented, but it constantly failed to get an 8gb file to be transferred between two VMs. LocalSend is more reliable in my case.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

i think there is no limit (at least on the software side), because it's local network only, so nothing is uploaded to a server but directly to the recipient. i could be wrong though.