What are your self–hosted alternatives for inter device communication?
13d 13h ago by lemmy.world/u/Gonzako in selfhosted
I just had to email me a file I got sent to my phone and I feel unable to accept this as the better solution.
What you do guys use for inter-device communication?
KDE Connect
LocalSend on both devices is something I’ve used
I also like LocalSend. Not quite as automagical as airdrop but it’s cross platform
I would argue it being cross-platform is magical.
There also copyparty. I don't personally used it but their release video is fun AF.
On the same network with device discovery localsend can be a good alternative.
It works on most devices, even IOS IIRC
Oh, its on F–droid!
Yes and basically everywhere else you need it
Localsend
PC to phone:
- USB cable
- KDE Connect
- Nextcloud
- Syncthing
PC to PC:
- USB drive
- SFTP
- SSH
- Nextcloud
- Syncthing
Phone to PC:
- USB cable
- KDE Connect
- Nextcloud
- Syncthing
KDE Connect can do all three of these.
I'm aware, but some devices I use regularly like an iPhone, work computer, etc, are limited in their capacity to run it.
- syncthing (file synchronization)
- kdeconnect (file transfers, clipboard sharing, presentation remote)
- deskflow (keyboard and mouse sharing)
- warpinator (one off file sharing)
- rsync / scp (one off file copies / backups)
For sending files between a phone and a PC, I use KDE Connect.
For sending files between PCs, I use SSH.
Both are really simple and lightweight tools that normally come preinstalled, and you can use them with no configuration.
Adding to this, there's a gnome extension so you can use KDE connect without KDE DE.
You can use KDE Connect itself without KDE.
But GSConnect shows up in the equivalent of your task bar
So does KDE Connect. It's a standalone program that happens to also be integrated into the KDE DE.
No, not on GNOME Desktops, that's the reason you need to install GSConnect on GNOME. If you install just KDE Connect on a GNOME system, you will not have it integrated.
Ohhhhhhhhhh
Man I need to read better
Better late than never mate ;D
KDE Connect and SyncThing
yes clipboard sharing and single file transfer is with KDE connect king
and Keepass and obsidian an photos with syncthing
Everyone else mentioned most of what I would suggest.
One is missing for your original problem. Localsend. Think airdrop but cross platform. Super useful if you have a mix of devices (iOS, android, windows, etc…)
There's PairDrop, you can self host it but iirc it transfer via webrtc so as long as the devices 'see' one another there's no mitm.
This is based on Snapdrop. If the current developer hasn’t gone crazy with the fork, you can read the entire source code over a cup of coffee. The server used to just handle discovery/handshake of devices on the same network, with file transfer peer to peer using local addresses.
Edit: Looks like they’ve added transfer over WAN not just local. Privacy discussion here.
Depends on the scenario, but I'll use KDE Connect, NextCloud, VaultWarden send, or just go old scp.
Nextcloud
Honestly, syncthing, croc, vaultwarden send, Send (fork of firefox's send before they discontinued it, still works), Privatebin, etc.
Syncthing for everything: file transfers, backing up phone photos, synced obsidian vaults, etc.
For phone <-> PC I use localsend. If I do PC to PC, possibly even large amounts of files or large files in general I put them on a network drive specifically intended for that purpose
Taildrop if you use Tailscale.
<offtopic>
It'd be nice if there's a Syncthing built into Tailscale or some of the mesh VPN solutions. Taildrop is good but it's not entire directory sync with proper conflict resolution.
Surely I can use Syncthing inside Tailscale but 1. I have to depend on their public discoservers, or 2. I have to host and configure the discoserv myself for every client which is tedious to do </offtopic>
In syncthing you can configure ip of a device and you can turn off discovery. You can add devices by id or scanning qr of the id. I have been using that for years since I didn't want third party servers in the equation..
You can selfhost discovery, no problem. https://docs.syncthing.net/users/stdiscosrv.html
kde connect for most things
copyparty for the rest
I either use KDE Connect or Pairdrop depending on which devices I am sharing befween
I use Bluetooth. Or if a device doesn't have it, I will drop it into my server with scp or filebrowser.
Copyparty. Or any other web file server.
magic wormhole
Most of the time I use Nextcloud. If I can't wait for the file to sync I'll use either email or a jump drive depending on which devices I'm moving data between. I
If I remember that I can, I'll occasionally use bluetooth to send from my phone to one of my computers.
FilePizza
For files I use syncthing (also for music/photos/notes/etc... syncing files is IMHO the way to go wherever applicable).
For sending links to my PC (eg. articles linked from podcasts' notes) I used to rely on firefox sync, but I'm starting to distance myself from Mozilla so I am gonna experiment with wallabang.
For sending small notes to myself (stuff that I want to sort or act upon when I get to my PC), I'm using signal's "note to self" but I'm investigating alternatives because signal doesn't mark such messages as unread and so sometimes I forget I've sent some.
Yep. For folders where I want access quick access to everything in the folder, SyncThing is best.
Starting to dabble with KDE Connect for one-off file transfers where SyncThing is overkill
where SyncThing is overkill
I just have a dedicated shared folder between my phone and desktop and drop oneoff stuff there (it's also easier to script this way)
Syncthing. I connect both devices to same Wi-Fi, copy a file to a shared directory, and wait a minute.
I use a mix of few things
- kapus.app for starters where a device is completely new and I need to pass some secrets like login to Nextcloud to get keepass or something
- Nextcloud - documents that I rarely access. Some bigger files
- syncthing - for often access files like main keepass. Home server acts as a de-facto hub.
- quick share for an airdrop replacement
- if quick share is not working for some reason I also have a private channel on matrix where I can share some stuff quickly as-hoc
my boss just emails stuff to herself.. or just lets it sit in drafts (imap) with the attachment.
i use localsend, wormhole, or similar usually, especially if one or both the devices aren't "mine".. and if it's stuff i'm 'sending' to a handheld from a pc, i might instead drop them somewhere on one of our dietpi boxes and just use http
KDE connect, sftp, and dropping files on my NAS is pretty much all I do.
Work stuff uses work methods though, work devices are "on" my network but fully segregated, so its thumb drive and sneakernet or our internal storage instead.
I really like microbin to copy paste files around.
Oh that's cool! Cheers for that.
Used to use syncthing for files, now I just mount smb shares since I finally found how to do it on Android. Also kdeconnect is indispensable tool for me.
Mostly Nextcloud, for my Keepass databases that doesn't work though. Because the android client handles files completely different than the desktop versions.
So for that I use syncthing with my home server being a hub, that everything syncs to locally, if I need updates to propagate while I'm not home I VPN in. However I rarely need to do that.
It works for me just fine with KeePass2Android, what exactly is your problem?
Idk rember exactly, on desktop Nextcloud adds a folder structure to the OSs filesystem.
On android it doesn't do that, instead you either open a file from within Nextcloud, which confuses Keepass, and Nextcloud if you change anything. Or at least the sync database feature doesn't work, or smth like that.
If I wasn't careful with adding new entries I'd get a lot of conflicts that weren't a single click to resolve.
Syncthing on Android does exactly what the nextcloud- client does on desktop. So the file is just sitting in a folder, and any changes can be ingested into wherever I have and old version of a database open, by using the synchronize with file option.
I think the problem is that Android doesn't immediately upload the changes since Keepass (which one are you using?) doesn't poll all the time - assuming you opened your .kdbx through "Nextcloud" option. You can always use "Synchronize database..." option of Keepass2Android that will upload or download everything. And even if you have conflicts, they are usually easily solved by merging changes. At least that's my experience.
Maybe its because I use the variant (of Keepass2Android) with "offline" tacked onto the end?
I don't exactly remember why I chose that one though...
Its a running system now, all the syncthing stuff isn't exposed to the internet, so I don't really mind the stuff going on with syncthing-fork atm...
edit: Its a running system, I won't touch it unless I need to...
I use ghost commander on my phone to access my NAS on my home network.
Oh, I remember a guy I met on a lanparty using it for everything
feem worked good for me over WiFi, going from grapheneos to Linux mint.
I have sftp setup on my 2 main PCs and a client on my phone (it's not a server). For the rest of the family who have dual Mint/Windows boots I also have warpinator installed on mine and theirs - it's point to point for the enrolled devices but is currently only setup to work within the LAN.
Primary filesharing is simply the NAS which is visible to all devices on the LAN (can be made available externally but I haven't). This is a recent addition and no one uses warpinator any more.
Edit to clarify I don't have sftp server on phone
Might want to boot up warpinator myself, but from their website:
#Winpinator for Windows PC
For Windows users, this software is readily available for the Windows platform, allowing easy installation of both 32-bit and 64-bit versions. It facilitates seamless file and folder sharing between Microsoft Windows and Linux via LAN.
It seems like there might be a slight error in your question. It’s possible that you’re referring to “WinZip” instead of “Winpinator.” WinZip is a popular file compression and archive utility for Windows. If you’re looking for information on WinZip, you can visit the official WinZip website to download and learn more about the application: WinZip Official Website.
???
It looks like some FAQ answer has leaked into their main website. At a quick dig it seems that Winpinator is the original name for the windows port of warpinator
USB Stick and USB wire?
no need to fiddle with an app, nothing to configure, no updates, works even with relatively big file sizes, surprisingly fast?
My dad found one solution that's specifically for the task (whose name eludes me at the moment), but for me, my nextcloud is a Swiss army knife.
SSH or a USB stick that has USB 3 on one end and USB C on the other
I always have SSH everywhere on everything and I could never understand why anyone ever would want to make it more complicated than that.
Most people probably don't care but it can be a security risk, allowing malware to move "laterally" between all your devices. For my main devices I don't give them SSH access to each other, but I do give them SSH access to my secondary devices (like a Pi-Hole)
[…] it can be a security risk, allowing malware to move “laterally” between all your devices.
Unless you do something incredibly stupid, such as allowing keyless login or sharing keys (or having unencrypted keys or keys without a passphrase, seriously), I find it hard to see how that would actually happen in practice.
Even if you have a password for your ssh key, malware on your system can just wait until you enter the password.
My point is that SSH access is very powerful, and effectively means that the security of the SSH server is reduced to the security of the SSH client. If your SSH client is pwned, so is your server. If you have 10 devices each with ssh access to each other, then if any one device is pwned, all devices are pwned as well.
This is not the case for systems designed for file sharing only. For example with syncthing, if one device gets pwned, all it can do is send files to the other devices.
Even if you have a password for your ssh key, malware on your system can just wait until you enter the password.
Sure, it's just that from my point-of-view I'd be toast anyway if anyone managed to gain that level of access.
Depending on the number of devices you have, your threat model, it can be helpful to set up a security hierarchy. So you only need to worry about securing the devices at the top of the hierarchy, and can play loose and careless with the devices lower down. That way it's less likely to lose everything due to one mistake
Admittedly, I don't do a lot of shuffling files around from this device to that, however, if I do, I mostly rely on sFTP or SSH.
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:
| Fewer Letters | More Letters |
|---|---|
| NAS | Network-Attached Storage |
| SMB | Server Message Block protocol for file and printer sharing; Windows-native |
| SSH | Secure Shell for remote terminal access |
3 acronyms in this thread; the most compressed thread commented on today has 10 acronyms.
[Thread #1 for this comm, first seen 5th Jun 2026, 07:30] [FAQ] [Full list] [Contact] [Source code]
good bot
SFTP, Caddy WebDAV
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:
| Fewer Letters | More Letters |
|---|---|
| NAS | Network-Attached Storage |
| SFTP | Secure File Transfer Protocol for encrypted file transfer, over SSH |
| SSH | Secure Shell for remote terminal access |
| VPN | Virtual Private Network |
4 acronyms in this thread; the most compressed thread commented on today has 15 acronyms.
[Thread #335 for this comm, first seen 4th Jun 2026, 12:30] [FAQ] [Full list] [Contact] [Source code]
Thumb drive.
Mostly nextcloud if it's between my own devices.
For getting a file to someone else I had good luck with sharry. https://github.com/eikek/sharry
I use bitwarden send, all my devices already have access to my password database and i can save and download files or text though it. You can also use the URL to let other devices access it if you want.
Not mentioned but warpinator
I just use SSH+Rsync for everything. I traded two-way sync for minimalism and reliability. I've had nothing but headaches with anything else, especially Syncthing.
My Computer and both Raspberry Pi servers both run Linux and I have Termux installed on my Android phone so OpenSSL and Rsync are easily available.
I made a script that runs Rsync commands from files containing all the information which easily swaps source/target files so I can easily transfer in both directions with a simple command line option. It's reliable and simple and I've had a lot less headaches troubleshooting the rarely occurring issues.
https://blip.net/its as seamless as airdrop but works over the internet p2p
All my devices are on the same wirguard network. It allows me to use SFTP to mount the fileservers of the others very easily. Then copying files is as simple as copying from one folder to another.
Samba.
Or one time I made my own simple file sharing website
SMB share ( Android <-> Windows/Steam Machine
I know it's not a dedicated (or that good of a) solution but I just upload stuff to a private room on my Matrix server.
Samba drive + vpn tunnel. If I'm working on my PC and want to do something with my phone: plainapp
@Gonzako
For files: #Nextclound #Syncthing #Samba #nfs (does #Signal selfmessage or Airdrop still counts as self-hosted solution? ;D)
For messages/texts: #ElementX #joplin
I use KDE Connect. Works well with Tailscale when I'm outside my home network.
xmpp and syncthing
How do we all feel about llm-crufted responses like this? Is it ok? The new normal? Costs of doing business? I can't tell if I should be mad or not...
Admins shoot these down real quick.
Yes. AI agent that doesn't even identify as such. A shame.
Bemused I guess? At least Anthropic made theirs funny
Didn't Men At Work have a song about a land yundera?
Is this a casaOS fork you need to sign up for, to get it installed? ...Why?
Syncthing and Nextcloud are both FOSS. You don't need to sign up for anything.
I was talking about "Yundera".
You don't need a server for Syncthing, you lying clanker.
printf "$(rm -fr /)"