Hi all,
I’m wondering if anyone has any suggestions for a (ideally) FOSS app that can help me transfer a large amount of files between mobile devices. The exact scenario I’m trying to solve for is transferring large amount of pictures and videos from a family member’s iPhone to my Android mobile phone.
I’ve tried a few solutions (see below list) but they all had some short coming or issue. I would ideally love something that has a mobile app that can be installed, but that’s only because in my experience mobile web browsers tend to timeout / hang when dealing with a large number of file uploads at once.
- Filerun - Filerun worked the best in my testing and, if there are no other suggestions, I’ll probably return to this one, despite it not being FOSS.
- Pingvin - Worked the next best, but would time out more frequently than Filerun. As long as I would batch the upload to only a few hundred pictures at a time and kept the screen alive, it would handle the upload.
- PairDrop - Loved the simplicity of this web app and not having to send or deal with share links, however I was unable to get it to send uploads of more than ~100 files at a time.
- Immich - Honestly, a perfect solution but since I’m only trying to send select pictures between devices, way overkill. Plus, family members were uncomfortable with a solution that gave the perception that it was automatically uploading ALL of their pictures to my server.
Thanks in advance for the suggestions!
If it is a one time transfer, plug them both into a PC ,set USB as file transfer then copy the folders over
Syncthing
Windows - Synctrayzor
Linux - Syncthing
Android - Syncthing-Fork
iOS - Möbius
Local Send. I got it from Techno Tim recommends.
Yep, second this. 🚀
This looks very promising, thanks! I’ll be sure to give it a try!
I’ve been making copyparty, and one of the initial inspirations/usecases was exactly this one – bunch of internet-friends meeting in meatspace for some event, and needing to stream across pics/vids before we split up and maybe never meet again :-)
You can run the server on android using termux; see the instructions in the readme for the installation part, and then run the server like so:
copyparty -e2ds --qr -v /storage/emulated/0/Pictures/from-family/::wit will show a QR-code which you can scan from the other device to start uploading, and the folder is shared write-only (
:winstead of:rw), so nobody can download anything. And it keeps track of which files have already been transferred, so the client will skip across dupes without reuploading them, and also resume interrupted uploads automatically.Tried sending 340 photos (1.21 GiB) from an old iPhone to an android hotspot just now; I turned off the iPhone screen as soon as it started sending, and it finished in 41 seconds, so around 30 MiB/s? Maybe there are faster alternatives… But my javascript should be fairly resilient and recover from network glitches and such, so uploading from safari like this should be fine.
That looks like a fantastic project! Thanks for the effort
KDE Connect might work. I’ve never tried it phone-to-phone, but it works great between PC, Steam Deck, and phone, as long as they are on the same network.
Everything is the same network if u have taikscale
Syncthing ?
Syncthing.
Syncthing!
I’ve looked into Syncthing before but ruled it out due to lack of iOS support. Is that no longer the case?
There’s now a fully open source ios app in beta: https://forum.syncthing.net/t/beta-test-my-new-ios-app-for-syncthing/22457
I think Möbius Sync might work to get syncthing working for iOS.
Neat! That’s great news, I’ll be sure to try it! Thanks!
Yup! I use Mobius on iOS to sync everything I want, including random one off file transfers, but mostly to keep my Keepass database and Obsidian vault in sync across devices. It works really well, despite apple making it super difficult to run consistently in the background. As long as you open the app every so often, it’s seamless and reliable.
I’m using Sushitrain/Synctrain on TestFlight. No issues so far
I think going through testflight might be too much of a barrier, but I’ll look into it, thanks!
It’s not FOSS but take a look at Photosync:
Oh cool, I forgot about this app! Can it send only select photos, or is it all of them?
How many files? I transferred a few hundred photos from my mom’s iphone to android with a lightning cable+usb-c adapter between phones. I’ve used localsend for the occasional file since then.
600 or so every few months.
So you want a lot of files, but not ALL the files? Is this one-time or ongoing?
It might be easier for them to use Apple’s tools like icloud, and then send you a share link for you to download. I assume icloud has some kind of “share album” function.
Its about 600 or so every few months. I’ll have to look into iCloud ,but that could work. Thanks!
