Localsend: An open-source cross-platform alternative to AirDrop

264

bbilsbie about 3 hours ago 110 commentsRead Article on github.com

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75% Positive

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Discussion (110 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews

eigenspace•about 3 hours ago

My problem is that all these alternatives require the devices to be on the same local network.

One beauty of Airdrop is that it creates and handles that local network automatically under the hood (as far as I understand). So you could be out on a hike with friends and Airdrop something.

The workaround I've found after switching to an Android device has been to teather my connection to my friend's device, which ends up creating a LAN that Localsend can work through, but this is not as nice an experience.

SingleSourceAI•about 2 hours ago

The protocol Apple uses under the hood is AWDL (Apple Wireless Direct Link), which is a proprietary peer-to-peer layer that runs alongside your existing WiFi connection without dropping it. It uses a time-sliced channel-hopping mechanism so the radio can serve both infrastructure WiFi and the direct peer link simultaneously.

That's the part that's hard to replicate. LocalSend and most alternatives need an existing shared network because they're just TCP/IP, they have no way to negotiate a direct radio link without OS-level support. Even Android's QuickShare, which does peer-to-peer via WiFi Direct, drops your existing WiFi connection on older devices because the radio can only be associated with one BSS at a time.

The EU interoperability mandate lxgr mentions would theoretically require Apple to expose this, but AWDL interop would mean licensing or reverse-engineering some fairly deep radio scheduling logic, so I'd expect compliance via a different (probably slower) path.

roman-holovin•1 minute ago

Both Samsung and Google already did it. My S26 Ultra supports Airdrop and I've tested it by sending and receiving photos with iPad

3form•about 1 hour ago

>It uses a time-sliced channel-hopping mechanism so the radio can serve both infrastructure WiFi and the direct peer link simultaneously.

This seems like such a basic solution that I'm surprised that it isn't required by any of the mainstream standards before WiFi Aware. I wonder if this was some sort of a patent issue or similar.

ryanmcbride•about 1 hour ago

Almost certainly patent related

gregoriol•about 2 hours ago

AWDL is such an amazing technology, it's understandable that Apple wants to keep it only for their devices as it gives them a noticeable advantage for quick stuff sharing.

neilalexander•about 2 hours ago

They didn't. Apple contributed the core logic to the Wi-Fi Alliance to build Wi-Fi Aware, which they now also support.

tencentshill•about 2 hours ago

The EU required they use an open standard https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/11/the-eu-made-apple-ad...

kennywinker•7 minutes ago

Except 20% of the time it just doesn’t work. Hardly an advantage if most people default to texting because of airdrop’s failure rate

george916a•about 1 hour ago

It is entirely possible to inject (unrelated) wifi frames while being associated to a BSS without violating the existing 802.11 standards. That’s why Apple is able to implement AWDL on standard compliant wifi hardware.

However the path towards this type of interoperability would likely go through additional standardization via IEEE 802.11* and the Wi-Fi alliance. At which point Apple will need to implement and support the new standards. There is no need to reverse engineer AWDL to meet the new European interoperability requirements. What is needed is for wifi chipset OEMs to implement such standardization. Something pretty routine of them.

It can be expected that Apple will also maintain the proprietary AWDL in order to support their legacy devices.

WhyNotHugo•32 minutes ago

AFAIK, Wi-Fi Aware / Neighbourhood Aware Networking is basically the "standardised" version of AirDrop, and as of 2025, iOS's Airdrop transparently inter-operates with it.

joenot443•about 1 hour ago

> which is a proprietary peer-to-peer layer that runs alongside your existing WiFi connection without dropping it. It uses a time-sliced channel-hopping mechanism so the radio can serve both infrastructure WiFi and the direct peer link simultaneously.

Maybe a network nerd can chime in - is this implementation so difficult that it's unrealistic we'll see an OSS version?

granthum•about 1 hour ago

I think the thing that makes an OSS implementation more difficult than iOS/macOS is the friction involved.

Say you've got an android phone, windows PC, and a linux box, and you want to be able to quickly drop files from each one. unless we get some kind of cooperation across all three platforms at the OS level, you'd at minimum need to install some kind of client into each system - when the nicest feature of airdrop is that it's baked into all of Apple's OSs, in my opinion. even if it worked exactly the same way, but had to be installed, I think it would see less use - and there's no real way for a single OSS project to do that across multiple OS platforms, to my knowledge

ghosty141•about 1 hour ago

Not an expert on mobile development but I doubt an android app has the low-level access needed to the wifi stack to do this.

lurker24325•about 1 hour ago

This is misinformation, including most of the comments here, the majority of phones from 2014 support Wi-Fi Direct, and simultaneous group and station mode (2 BSS, yes even different channels). Even most Wi-Fi chips generally not just smartphones for a very long time. They stay connected to your home network.

When Quickshare drops your Wi-Fi connection, its not Direct anymore, that's just soft AP from an error, and if that doesn't work, it fallback to Bluetooth. Bluetooth is used for provisioning as well.

The only reason why many apps don't use it is because of buggy implementation, some phones require a full restart after using Wi-Fi Direct to fix connectivity issues, even Motorola's own product line with Smart Connect use it only with certain models, despite having Wi-Fi direct due to poor implementation (can be forced). They even have a white list of supported adapter for the Windows app since direct is used as well, can be unofficially force enabled for Mediatek based adapters (rare on some laptops).

Back in 2016 things were much stable on Android phones with Wi-Fi Direct, even with old Blackberry, there were many apps including file managers that used it before it was essentially dropped, even for onboarding/provisioning apps like HP printers...

Apple's Airdrop success is about gaining traction, in the era of Wi-Fi Direct or other methods, most people were not aware of such features, as it required an app to be installed, they used email/messaging, even when Airdrop was first introduced and preinstalled, it took years for the average person to use it.

coldstartops•about 1 hour ago

also they use mDNS, which many programming languages, such as go, got it in their net library

idiotsecant•about 2 hours ago

Seems weird there is no 802.n variant to do this very popular thing

neilalexander•about 2 hours ago

That's precisely what Wi-Fi Aware (NaN) is and it is heavily based on AWDL. It's even built into recent versions of iOS and Android.

max8539•8 minutes ago

Airdrop is also pretty weird: sometimes it can’t find other phones (probably when a previous transfer failed silently in the background). Also, it had some issues searching for contacts when there was no mobile/Wi-Fi connection (tried to send photos to another phone in the mountains). Sometimes it could just freeze and not work… Apple magic here isn’t really useful.

nyreed•about 2 hours ago

For true crossplatform p2p the closest I have found is FlyingCarpet [1].

But it is not super reliable or friendly.

[1] https://github.com/spieglt/FlyingCarpet

rubslopes•27 minutes ago

Thanks for the tip. Just tried it and it worked great between MacOS and Android.

eigenspace•about 2 hours ago

Very cool, I didn't know about this. I'll watch it with interest.

WhyNotHugo•34 minutes ago

Indeed, Localsend only does the last step of what Airdrop does. With Localsend, you need to:

- Create an ad-hoc Wi-Fi network on one device.

- Connect the other device(s) to that Wi-Fi network.

- Now run Localsend.

The first two steps are a bit of a drag, and the fact that Airdrop handles it is what makes it so frictionless to use.

askldfhalkdfh•about 1 hour ago

This. Localsend may be very useful for a set of devices you control or influence. The USP of Airdrop is ad hoc sharing with people you don't really know. Classic case is meeting strangers on holiday and you want to swap some photos of the trip you're on. One or both of you doesn't have data or time to install anything, or it's just too hard to persuade someone they should install random app. Pairing Bluetooth or setting up local networks is way too convoluted and time consuming.

With Airdrop you have trivially easy, "just works" sharing with people in proximity. It works great between iPhones and Pixel phones now they support it. It just needs support to spread to more Android devices.

davely•42 minutes ago

> With Airdrop you have trivially easy, "just works" sharing with people in proximity.

Funny enough, I encounter so many problems trying to share things via AirDrop with friends, family, and even my own Apple devices that I just tell everyone to install LocalSend and I find that things work better.

I’m not sure why that is, because AirDrop used to work pretty well for me. But it’s been an exercise in frustration more often than not for me.

(Obviously, LocalSend works only as long as everyone is on the same network.)

t43562•17 minutes ago

setting up local networks is so trivial compared to forcing everyone to buy an Apple gizmo.

bee_rider•9 minutes ago

True. But I mean these are photos (from strangers that you aren’t even willing to exchange phone numbers with?). It is a really non-essential feature anyway, so most likely everybody who doesn’t have an Apple device skips it.

satvikpendem•about 1 hour ago

Iroh is a relay protocol for peer to peer transfers over the Internet so it doesn't have this problem, check out my other comment here about wrappers around the protocol for sending files, Sendme is the one I use.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47935026

eigenspace•about 1 hour ago

I don't want to send things over the internet, I want to do things locally.

t43562•31 minutes ago

bluetooth is local. Actually, I realise I'm being facetious since I've not managed to get Apple bluetooth to connect to anything non Apple yet.

simonmales•about 2 hours ago

I think nowadays on Android it's called QuickShare, and it works. But I believe the fragmentation and awareness is a part of the problem for Android.

eigenspace•about 2 hours ago

Can't QuickShare cross-platform. My wife has an iPhone and my desktop and laptop are linux, so QuickShare is a non-solution for me.

Xantier•about 2 hours ago

Which alternatives are you using for AirDrop on Linux? I haven't been able to find a good one for this yet.

olyjohn•about 2 hours ago

KDE Connect works pretty great for sending files, though you do have to be on the same network.

davsti4•about 1 hour ago

rquickshare works on Linux and is 99% reliable for me, but I don't have a suggestion for iOS devices since I don't use them. https://github.com/Martichou/rquickshare/releases

vrganj•about 2 hours ago

QuickShare is compatible with AirDrop these days, thanks to EU regulations: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/11/the-eu-made-apple-ad...

sholladay•about 1 hour ago

Not only that, but with iOS 17.1 or later, AirDrop transfers will continue to work if you go out of Wi-Fi range during the transfer. It seamlessly switches to an Internet-based relay.

chasil•about 1 hour ago

I am usually able to coerce a Localsend connection by using a WiFi hotspot on the target device.

Usually, but not always.

eigenspace•about 1 hour ago

I literally said that in my comment:

> The workaround I've found after switching to an Android device has been to teather my connection to my friend's device, which ends up creating a LAN that Localsend can work through, but this is not as nice an experience.

lakshyanoir•about 1 hour ago

try out this app called "Blip". It doesn't require you to be on the same network.

lorenzohess•about 2 hours ago

If you're on a hike you can get on the same network by joining your friend's phone WiFi hotspot.

eigenspace•about 2 hours ago

I literally said that in my comment. I also said it's not as nice an experience.

kalleboo•about 1 hour ago

I'm honestly surprised that WiFi Hotspot doesn't isolate hosts, after companies like Meta have been caught running servers inside their apps and connecting to those to track users.

tetris11•about 2 hours ago

Wireguard VPN to your home network, and then you can do anything

teew•about 2 hours ago

"Check out this alternative road vehicle I invented: it works on most surfaces except it can't drive on inter-city roads."

"You could fix that by builing a rail track and using a train."

agrounds•about 2 hours ago

And everyone you ever want to share files with locally also has access to your home VPN?

eigenspace•about 2 hours ago

That's an even worse solution than the hacky workaround of just teathering my internet connection.

The whole point of these solutions is to not have to transmit data over the internet, it should work over a local dynamic connection.

Fokamul•about 2 hours ago

Yes exactly, that's why another RCE which will be found in Airdrop, if found by bad actor. Will be pretty fun to watch.

Last RCE in Airdrop, could be made into worm, it was found by whitehat, luckily for Apple there are still people, which are willing report exploits for little money, so billionaires can enjoy their life on yachts.

satvikpendem•about 1 hour ago

Look into Sendme [0] and AltSendme [1] (which is a GUI around the former), they use Iroh [2] which is an open-source encrypted peer-to-peer relay service to send data so there are no limits whatsoever for sending and receiving files, because there's no central server.

From my earlier comment about a similar thread a couple days ago about which file sharing apps people use [3]:

[0] https://github.com/n0-computer/sendme

[1] https://github.com/tonyantony300/alt-sendme

[2] https://github.com/n0-computer/iroh

[3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47906587

3371•41 minutes ago

This kind of services that requires the user to share a seed/code to the recipient always seems kinda awkward to me. The code is not simple/short enough to be verbally communicated; If I can send the code, I usually can just send the file.

gejose•43 minutes ago

Been using this on all my devices (macos, iPhone, iPad, android, windows) and love it!

coldstartops•about 1 hour ago

Hi,

I am late to the party, but I was also building in this space in the last year,

Basically I did a peer to peer filesystem named keibidrop: https://keibidrop.com/

I made it public last week. It does what local send does, but also via WAN. Still did not launch the mobile apps.

And 1 up is that it has also a virutal filesystem that is synced both ways.

repository is here: https://github.com/KeibiSoft/KeibiDrop

The code is open source, except for the UI, and I did benchmark on loopback vs localsend (local send is faster :D )

https://keibisoft.com/blog/keibidrop-benchmarks-vs-competiti...

and was also trying to get a commenting thread in /r/golang yesterday!

behind the hood I went with PQC, + gRPC + FUSE.

newhotelowner•about 3 hours ago

And it works in the browser. https://web.localsend.org/

From windows to android to iOS.

tetris11•about 2 hours ago

Amazing! Though v1.18.0 hasn't dropped in F-droid yet

miguel-muniz•about 2 hours ago

https://github.com/schlagmichdoch/pairdrop

A similar project but this one works entirely in the browser and can connect to clients beyond your local network with "public" rooms

cachius•43 minutes ago

Pairdrop is awesome! The docs are a bit hidden, the FAQ is at https://github.com/schlagmichdoch/pairdrop/blob/master/docs/... and the How-To for integration into Share menu on Android, iOS and Windows at https://github.com/schlagmichdoch/PairDrop/blob/master/docs/...

They forked sharedrop after it and snapdrop got acquired and enshittified by LimeWire, whoever that is now.

lxgr•about 3 hours ago

I feel like we need a spamsolutions.txt [1] for purported AirDrop replacements.

This one fails the "must not require an existing Wi-Fi network that both peers are connected to" criterion.

[1] https://craphound.com/spamsolutions.txt

a7fort•about 3 hours ago

Recently started using it, it works really well and it's much more reliable than AirDrop. But the UX could be improved.

But I just wish Apple fixed AirDrop, every time I go to use I have so little confidence in it, it often doesn't see devices or if you have multiple Mac users it will confuse them, showing you the same Mac device twice without telling you which user it is

d3Xt3r•about 2 hours ago

I'm curious, what do you people use this for? What are all these (presumably large) files that you guys are generating and transferring, that requires the use of apps like these?

Like in my case, the only files I generate on my phone are photos and videos, and these get backed up by Immich, which I can then share with someone by sending them a link to the files/album in question. I imagine normal folks would use iCloud or Google Photos for the same task.

For syncing other files like documents and such, I use ownCloud OCIS, and I'd imagine most other folks would use something like DropBox or iCloud, or even just email or WhatsApp the files.

For local network transfers of say ISOs or something, I'd just copy them over SMB, which is pretty much universal and doesn't need any special app. Or even just plug in a hard drive, if I'm doing backups.

So I don't understand why I should be using this.

energy123•17 minutes ago

Sending plain text from one device to another. I was debugging my steamdeck and I send code snippet from desktop chatgpt to steamdeck using Localsend to run. Then I send the debug output (also plaintext) back to desktop to ask chatgpt what to try next. Other than this, random small files from time to time. The app is lightweight and just works.

michaelscott•about 2 hours ago

For me, video is the main one. Sizes from 100MB - 3GB. Getting videos from an Apple device to an Android is a pain in the ass because I need to 2FA log in or click through something relatively convoluted (Dropbox, GDrive) or deal with pulling out some hardware I use once every 100 years (external drives). Localsend is a 2 or 3 click operation and very robust.

inquirerGeneral•about 2 hours ago

Luckily, Google enabled Airdrop inside of Quick Share so my phones and my MacBook and my Windows PC all can share now.

internet_points•about 2 hours ago

my kid recently wanted to transfer a picture from an iPad drawing app to a windows laptop, I wish I knew about localsend for that

Scarbutt•44 minutes ago

Silly apple. They should remove airdrop and tell users they have to rely on an internet connection and use whatsapp or email for quick, one-off file transfers between their iphones and macbooks.

dmak•about 3 hours ago

Have you tried troubleshooting those issues already? I had similar visibility issues in the past, but seems to always work now for me.

tonyedgecombe•about 3 hours ago

I think it initiates the connection over Bluetooth so if your Bluetooth is poor it isn’t going to work very well.

OGWhales•about 3 hours ago

Yup, for me I can see the device but when I try to initiate a send it just doesn't show up on the other device about half the time. I've not found a reliable way to fix it either, toggling AirDrop on and off on both devices seems the best way to fix it but only works like 70% of the time.

akihitot•about 1 hour ago

This application supports the following platforms: Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, iOS, and FireOS. I was surprised. It is very interesting that it is implemented using a combination of REST API, HTTPS encryption, and local networking.

dTal•about 1 hour ago

I love this software for its reliability (as compared to, say, KDE Connect, which I gave up on after years of frustrated use after it became clear that the developers did not believe there was an issue and it would never improve).

I do not love that it is a heavy electron app that takes many seconds to launch on my mid-spec machine and burns 20% of an entire CPU core the entire time it is running.

Why can't we have a simple command line tool that works?

hacker161•15 minutes ago

It’s open source so you can put together that CLI yourself if so motivated

ddtaylor•about 2 hours ago

Just use the existing magic wormhole protocol. It works and has been deployed for a long time.

ho_schi•about 2 hours ago

No. It is using a central “well known server” and requires internet.

Test:

    * Does it work in an airplane?
    * Does it work in a submarine?
    * Does it work in the mountains, when a thunderstorm is approach and you need to share the GPX?

Basically my Garmin Edge and iPhone can do this. Magic-Wormhole fails in all test cases.

Implementation shall be able to negoiate a connection locally (e.g. Bluetooth) and upgrade to peer-to-peer WiFi if need (Garmin doesn’t need that part, GPX are usually smaller than 1024 KB).

Unicironic•about 3 hours ago

After switching to Linux, this was one of the very first applications I installed.

It really helped cement how great open source apps can be for me.

subscribed•about 2 hours ago

I use it on all my devices and tbh it's the absolute best option I found.

Previously I was using syncthing or had to install ftp server, used wormhole after packing all my files into one, etc. Android QuickShare never worked for me (wouldn't help me much with sending to the pc either).

It has some rough edges (ie: on multi-homed devices it's less that ideal to see the one octet that matters, when the list is very long scrolling whilst sending will cause the process to crap out), but other than that it's always reliable.

I'm very happy with it too.

jumpconc•about 2 hours ago

For your own trusted devices on a LAN, you should try KDE Connect. KDE is not required.

gejose•36 minutes ago

What do you find to be better about it over LocalSend? (The website seems to be down)

viktorcode•about 3 hours ago

One of the most convenient aspects of Air Drop for me is that it selects the fastest available connection between the devices and ability to work without both devices being on the same network.

I wonder if any of the alternatives do the same.

gonzalohm•about 3 hours ago

Quickshare does

subscribed•about 2 hours ago

Never worked for me, not even once.

I tried on three phones, two of which are using the same account, I'm reasonably confident I am technically competent to not make silly mistakes, though the best I've achieved was endless wait.

I had better success with IR and BT file transfers. Hell, even spinning a local http server (with python -m http.server) works better than quick share.

gumboshoes•about 3 hours ago

Posted here many times https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=github.com/localsend

worldsavior•about 2 hours ago

It's not even close to the speed AirDrop has. This is not an alternative to AirDrop. I tried it multiple times but it's slow every time. These alternatives don't use the same technology.

afavour•about 2 hours ago

It is an alternative. It just doesn't fulfill all the needs Airdrop does. I've had situation where I want to share a photo or a text file and it'll work great in that scenario.

tnelsond4•about 1 hour ago

I end up just opening a web server in termux on my phone and having the other side download from my hotspot every time i want to transfer a file because all the other android solutions really really suck.

jmarchello•about 1 hour ago

Localsend is awesome! My team and I use it all the time for safely transmitting vpn configs, ssh keys, etc... It works flawlessly. The auto-generated names are pretty fun too.

ifh-hn•about 2 hours ago

I love this app, it's on all my devices, it's also written in my favourite cross platform development framework (dart/flutter). Very useful app, with a massive advantage of airdrop, no need for apple. Irrespective of if it's a drop in replacement.

mikae1•about 3 hours ago

Lovely, but was replaced by KDE Connect for me. Connect works for iOS, macOS, Android, Linux, you name it.

tryptophan•about 3 hours ago

I like kde connect, but find it randomly breaks every month or so and for the life of me cannot figure out why. A week or so later it starts working again.

smusamashah•about 2 hours ago

List of browser based p2p file sharing tools https://gist.github.com/SMUsamaShah/fd6e275e44009b72f64d0570...

justindotdev•about 3 hours ago

came with omarchy pre installed, usedd it ever since. bonus points for it being open source too. i was surprised it is written in flutter. looking at how mutli-platform it is, flutter was the more appealing choice.

sdoering•about 3 hours ago

D'accord.

xd1936•about 2 hours ago

Great app. I wish it supported PWA features like Web Share Targeting.

https://web.dev/articles/web-share

https://developer.chrome.com/docs/capabilities/web-apis/web-...

ementally•about 2 hours ago

They have web app but had terrible experience with it (can't find devices when you are using the mobile app and the other device is using the web app).

https://github.com/localsend/web

JackFener•about 2 hours ago

I'd love this to work but I always had trouble making it work on my google tv. Wanted to share files (~2 gb files) from my Mac to my TV but the transfer kept failing

faangguyindia•about 3 hours ago

I used it, but it prevented my mac from sleeping. After some investigation I found it's local send.

ChrisLTD•about 3 hours ago

Does it run in the background?

mrbombastic•about 3 hours ago

I use this all the time dropping files from old android device to mac, thanks devs!

bahadiraydin•about 3 hours ago

I've been using this for years, simple, gets the job done. Nice UI.

_-_-__-_-_-•about 3 hours ago

Been using LocalSend for a few years, it works great even when sharing files between devices sharing a mobile connection.

jrflo•about 3 hours ago

I love local send. It’s ridiculously fast for sending large amounts of media too.

chasil•about 1 hour ago

When multiple files are in transit, Localsend always transfers two at once.

ohuc•about 1 hour ago

Using it works perfectly for me!

pryanshu89•about 3 hours ago

Really cool! I used it a couple of times and did not expect it to work. But it worked. :D

Forgeties79•about 3 hours ago

It’s not as slick as AirDrop and you have to sort of “prep“ both devices whenever you want to send/receive anything, it’s never just ready to go, but it’s incredibly reliable and will move anything from one machine to another. Just having that consistency across literally any device is so nice.

0xcoops•about 2 hours ago

So needed

rolymath•about 3 hours ago

Excuse my ignorance but why are there so many solutions like this? Especially if they aren't intercompatible (which I'm assuming they're not)

lxgr•about 3 hours ago

Because none of them actually match the capabilities of AirDrop, since they essentially require controlling the full stack (UI, low-level networking including Bluetooth for discoverability, Wi-Fi peer to peer connections without dropping any existing infrastructure connection etc.)

Many have tried, I don't think anyone has succeeded.

Supposedly the EU interoperability mandate will make this possible going forward, though? (The tricky part is usually not getting your device to speak some protocol, but to get Apple devices to actually respond to your attempts.)

jMyles•about 3 hours ago

The README and website certainly seem polished, but I haven't used the utility yet.

What's the main value prop over wormhole? That it works from the browser?

subscribed•about 2 hours ago

That you can send over 1000 files without it messing it up, and they'll end in the right place.

That you can set the recipient so it will auto-accept from the trusted senders.

And for me that in Android I can do Share to....localsend to do it faster than with wormhole.

analog8374•about 3 hours ago

Hey I use this. Works great. Ez.

throawayonthe•about 2 hours ago

i really wish Wi-Fi Direct succeeded

maybe eventually something like quickshare & airdrop mold into an interoperable thing but i'm not holding my breath