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KDE Connect: Enabling communication between all your devices

community.kde.org

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Re: KDE Connect: Enabling communication between all your devices

#71

Post by estimator7292 »

greenavocado wrote: post #56
roshin wrote: post #12

when it works it's amazing. but very often both my phone and laptop are connected to the same WiFi, yet kde connect can't see them. I can't figure out how to diagnose and solve that when it happens

Speculating here based solely on general networking knowledge. You may have "AP Isolation" enabled and/or multicast blocking on your network may be causing problems. If I was working on KDE Connect I would add a microphone and speaker based pairing system using OFDM modulation lifted from Rattlegram. Each device would share all IP addresses associated with themselves using sound to broadcast the information.

Just use Bluetooth. These days it's very uncommon for a PC to not have Bluetooth. More of my PCs have Bluetooth than have microphones.

Re: KDE Connect: Enabling communication between all your devices

#72

Post by cpuguy83 »

tga wrote: post #47
roshin wrote: post #12

when it works it's amazing. but very often both my phone and laptop are connected to the same WiFi, yet kde connect can't see them. I can't figure out how to diagnose and solve that when it happens

Same here, Fedora and iOS. I've mostly stopped using it because I couldn't rely on the app working when I needed it. The computer doesn't even change addresses, there is no need for mDNS or anything fancy, setting up devices manually once would be just fine.

Yeah eveey time I want to use it I generally need to unpair and pair it again. Weird stuff like trying to send my clipboard from my phone and it goes the other way.

It's handy, but needs work.

Re: KDE Connect: Enabling communication between all your devices

#73

Post by amelius »

It works in one direction: sending files from my Pixel (GOS) phone to Linux.

But the UX could be better. When I send a file, no notification is shown on my phone. But when I look in my Downloads/ folder, the file is there, so that's good.

Now, when I open the kdeconnect-app on Linux, it cannot connect to my phone. Even if the app is open on my phone. I see the phone, but it says "disconnected".

So, as it stands, I put this in the "barely works, needs more love from developers" category.

Re: KDE Connect: Enabling communication between all your devices

#74

Post by hexagonwin »

dmpk2k wrote: post #52
sombragris wrote: post #17

At least in my use case (as link between Android devices and both Linux/Win PCs) KDE Connect is a real killer app. It enabled seamless integration and saved me lots of hassle and time. It really should get more exposure. I see reports that it doesn't work. These are mostly for distros where Plasma is either rather old or taking a backseat after other environment (usually Gnome). I'm having great results with the late…

How is Slackware doing nowadays? Last release was several years ago, but I need a replacement for Win 10 on my PC.

It's doing very well. The Slackware 15.0 release is now a few years old, though the packages are still being updated. Slackware-current has latest everything.

Re: KDE Connect: Enabling communication between all your devices

#75

Post by dTal »

roshin wrote: post #12

when it works it's amazing. but very often both my phone and laptop are connected to the same WiFi, yet kde connect can't see them. I can't figure out how to diagnose and solve that when it happens

Agreed. I've read a lot of apologetics for KDE Connect but there's definitely something wrong with discovery. Often it will fail to discover other devices unless I click "refresh" in both devices. I've gone as far as writing a script to force-refresh at 1 minute intervals. Sometimes it can't be persuaded to work at all. Blame my network maybe, but LocalSend works every time.

Re: KDE Connect: Enabling communication between all your devices

#76

Post by Jedd »

roshin wrote: post #12

when it works it's amazing. but very often both my phone and laptop are connected to the same WiFi, yet kde connect can't see them. I can't figure out how to diagnose and solve that when it happens

That's weird, especially with the exhaustive details you provided there.

I've rarely had any connection issues with Google Pixel (7 currently) and Debian with Plasma 5 or 6 on x86 / 64 platforms.

Re: KDE Connect: Enabling communication between all your devices

#77

Post by immibis »

goda90 wrote: post #51
mbeex wrote: post #48

The one thing I dislike, is the trouble to finish the application in a sane way: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=423497

I can't say I'm experienced with Android development, but is there something about this issue that makes it hard for a volunteer to submit a PR? Seems like it should be just an OS API call or something.

Android doesn't really have such a thing as quitting an app. You're meant to just stop doing stuff when off screen, and let your app be evicted in LRU order (or whatever order is actually used). If your app does background stuff you should have a settings toggle to do the background stuff or not, and when it's on and the phone is on, you do the background stuff.

Re: KDE Connect: Enabling communication between all your devices

#78

Post by AnonymousPlanet »

roshin wrote: post #12

when it works it's amazing. but very often both my phone and laptop are connected to the same WiFi, yet kde connect can't see them. I can't figure out how to diagnose and solve that when it happens

I used to recommend KDE-Connect left and right but stopped doing so because it went from rock solid and dependable to a complete disaster in a couple of years.

Linux, Android, iOS, macOS all worked in harmony. Now not even two Android phones using the same software version can see each other, file transfers keep failing after a brief while. And all with the same devices that worked before, across various networks.

Not to say anything about connectivity between Linux and Android or iOS.

Re: KDE Connect: Enabling communication between all your devices

#80

Post by account42 »

This seems to have more technical info: https://userbase.kde.org/KDEConnect

E.g. that it works over the local network or bluetooth only, no remote connectivity without a VPN which the marketing page with fancy graphics (https://kdeconnect.kde.org/) doesn't even tell you because it's so dumbed down to the point of being useless.

Also, why the fuck does KDE have two separate wikis.

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