If you already use Tailscale, Taildrop [1] works great.
Free and Open Source Alternative to Airdrop
21–30 of 156 posts
Re: Free and Open Source Alternative to Airdrop
#22All of these "alternatives to airdop" don't seem to actually do what airdrop does, which is create an ad-hoc wireless connection. Airdrop isn't just a nice UI for sending files between people, it allows a wi-fi speed transfer between two devices that aren't connected to an existing network of that speed.
Apple usually does excellent integrations between their devices. But I haven't used AirDrop so I'm not familiar with how it works: in order to create an ad-hoc wireless connection, if the devices were already connected to some wifi access point, are they temporarily disconnected for the duration of the ad-hoc connection? If not, I'd guess that Apple devices maybe come with 2 WiFi adapters inside?
AirPlay and Miracast both rely on WiFi (in case of Miracast it's WiFi Direct, for AirPlay I'm not sure), so it's not uncommon for WiFi chips to maintain 2 connections at once.
Re: Free and Open Source Alternative to Airdrop
#23All of these "alternatives to airdop" don't seem to actually do what airdrop does, which is create an ad-hoc wireless connection. Airdrop isn't just a nice UI for sending files between people, it allows a wi-fi speed transfer between two devices that aren't connected to an existing network of that speed.
Apple usually does excellent integrations between their devices. But I haven't used AirDrop so I'm not familiar with how it works: in order to create an ad-hoc wireless connection, if the devices were already connected to some wifi access point, are they temporarily disconnected for the duration of the ad-hoc connection? If not, I'd guess that Apple devices maybe come with 2 WiFi adapters inside?
No they don’t disconnect from WiFi and as of the latest iOS you can now leave airdrop radius and it will use the internet to continue transfer. Its magic
Re: Free and Open Source Alternative to Airdrop
#24All of these "alternatives to airdop" don't seem to actually do what airdrop does, which is create an ad-hoc wireless connection. Airdrop isn't just a nice UI for sending files between people, it allows a wi-fi speed transfer between two devices that aren't connected to an existing network of that speed.
This. Airdrop is actually viable for transferring huge files, like RAW photos or ProRes footage. I've had video engineering professionals ask me if it's viable to implement Airdrop support in something like a camera or a recorder, not because it's pretty or doesn't need cables, but because it would save them time in a media workflow (they are busy people).
Re: Free and Open Source Alternative to Airdrop
#25Do you guys actually share this much locally? I have my local sync'd to my cloud storage and just pull it down if/when I need it. I'll just email/text people around me if they don't have airdrop compatibility.
I'm trying to learn how to use Tiktok (yes, I know, I'm sorry) and other social media and cross-posting isn't really great and some platforms pretty much force you to post from mobile devices or vice versa (Tiktok, Instagram for mobile, LinkedIn for desktop web), and I need to pass source videos from mobile to editors on PC and back and forth for posting on the different media.. It's a big of a mess, I'm kinda sure t…
Sounds much more painful than dropping them in iCloud / Google Drive / Dropbox, as you have to send, accept, save, switch to app, upload instead of just going to the app, select file from cloud storage, upload.
Especially when you might want to upload from multiple devices.
Re: Free and Open Source Alternative to Airdrop
#26All of these "alternatives to airdop" don't seem to actually do what airdrop does, which is create an ad-hoc wireless connection. Airdrop isn't just a nice UI for sending files between people, it allows a wi-fi speed transfer between two devices that aren't connected to an existing network of that speed.
Apple usually does excellent integrations between their devices. But I haven't used AirDrop so I'm not familiar with how it works: in order to create an ad-hoc wireless connection, if the devices were already connected to some wifi access point, are they temporarily disconnected for the duration of the ad-hoc connection? If not, I'd guess that Apple devices maybe come with 2 WiFi adapters inside?
IIRC Apple uses some proprietary radio protocol (or maybe it’s just Bluetooth) to discover and communicate with nearby Apple products.
Re: Free and Open Source Alternative to Airdrop
#27Earlier quoted context omitted.
Who cares about money? Being free seems much more important.
... those are equivalent statements
No, free software is different than "does not cost money". You can pay for free software. For example the OS of my TV (not a smart TV but still) is free and opensource, yet I paid for it when I bought my TV.
Re: Free and Open Source Alternative to Airdrop
#28All of these "alternatives to airdop" don't seem to actually do what airdrop does, which is create an ad-hoc wireless connection. Airdrop isn't just a nice UI for sending files between people, it allows a wi-fi speed transfer between two devices that aren't connected to an existing network of that speed.
So Wi-Fi Direct?
ISTR around something like the Galaxy Nexus Google doing demos of beaming files between devices via WiFi Direct after having exchanged info with an NFC tap.
But that was just before they decided everything had to go via their cloud.
Curiously if you used a London bus in around 2005 with bluetooth on you would experience a lot of files being sent to you via ad hoc networks.
Re: Free and Open Source Alternative to Airdrop
#29Do you guys actually share this much locally? I have my local sync'd to my cloud storage and just pull it down if/when I need it. I'll just email/text people around me if they don't have airdrop compatibility.
Back when I was teaching, I was using sharedrop to share the project files, slides, exam solutions (after the exam of course), etc... to my students.
I used to set up a local http server with `python -m http.server` until one of my student told me about sharedrop.io
Re: Free and Open Source Alternative to Airdrop
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
... those are equivalent statements
No, free software is different than "does not cost money". You can pay for free software. For example the OS of my TV (not a smart TV but still) is free and opensource, yet I paid for it when I bought my TV.
Why did you buy a non-smart TV with an OS?