I recently switched back to iOS after years on Android, and on this point I've been very impressed with Airdrop. Dead simple UI, very quick transfer speeds, uses WiFi or Bluetooth as available. It's just a shame that it's limited to Apple devices.

What about https://syncthing.net/?

EDIT: I know you said without going through the internet. Syncthing can be configured to only transfer over specific networks (e.g. home LAN/WI-FI)

>I can't believe that there isn't a simple service to transfer data between my cellphone and my computer without going through the internet.

KDE Connect, https://community.kde.org/KDEConnect#What_is_KDE_Connect.3F i've been using it for years

A number of Android File Managers these days (Amaze comes to mind) include a toggle option to turn your phone into an FTP Server. You would then just pull it up on your computer via ftp://192.168.X.X and put an optional user/pass over it. I've used that for many years if I need to quickly transfer some documents or songs between devices.

Not technically internet so much as intranet.

Resilio sync [1] is a great service I've used to transfer files using P2P technology. It still uses the Internet, but avoids any intervening parties.

If you're using Android, you could just use USB transfer using Android File Transfer [2]. Super easy, super fast.

[1] https://www.resilio.com/individuals/ [2] https://www.android.com/filetransfer/

KDE connect works without internet access. I haven't used it on Windows, but it works fine for me on Ubuntu.

If you use Apple devices, it's called AirDrop and works surprisingly well. I use it a lot, between computers, phones, and ipads, within the family and sometimes with other people, too.

Does local wifi count? I use KDE Connect for sending files over wifi and a bunch of other things.

You may also want to check Syncthing, which others have also recommended.

I just use iCloud Drive. Files on my desktop and in my documents folder get automatically synced to my phone and vice versa. It's extremely easy and painless. I often find myself on my phone, saving a file to my iCloud desktop, and finding the file on my desktop the next time I open the lid of my laptop.

Tangentially related - I've always thought it's dumb that I can't just plug my iPhone in to any PC and have it show up as a removable storage device.

I'm sure people who know more than me will give me a list of great reasons why it's not straightforward to implement...

But it doesn't change the fact that I have this incredible device (iPhone X) with 256gb of blindingly fast NAND flash storage, of which I am only utilizing 30gb, yet I still have to tote around a f*ing stupid little plastic USB dongle if I want to copy some files around.

Besides AirDrop there is "Copy and Paste across devices" https://support.apple.com/kb/ph25168?locale=en_US

AirDroid is pretty handy on Android; file transfer, browsing your phone's files/images, sending SMS from your desktop browser (although Messages now does that native) etc. Much to my surprise, there's also an iOS version - https://itunes.apple.com/app/id1194539178

SMB over local network would be my default, I recall an app for using SMB with Android back as far as the 2.x days.

We have tons of protocols for transferring files over networks, there's no reason for them to go to the public Internet, nor for them to be mobile phone specific.

If you use GNOME, GSConnect is magical.

https://github.com/andyholmes/gnome-shell-extension-gsconnec...

In the Apple ecosystem, there's AirDrop which uses either Bluetooth or Wifi. You can quickly share files between any iOS and Mac devices very simply.

There is. It's called dukto (http://www.msec.it/blog/?page_id=11), and works on mac, linux, windows and android. It will use zeroconf to automatically find all duktos on the local network, and let you send stuff to them in a blink.

Proprietary but free as in beer.

You didn't say whether you are on iOS or Android, but if you are on iOS airdrop works very well.

You might be interested in KDE Connect, which provides (among other things) essentially a thin wrapper around SSHFS. It's the most convenient method of computer<->phone transfer I've found.

What I'd like to see is an app that runs a webserver on my phone to share a slideshow of pictures or videos to a browser on the lan. I haven't found this and I'm thinking about writing one.

Check out https://github.com/claudiodangelis/qr-filetransfer for computers and phones on the same LAN.

Works great, and I'm planning on integrating that functionality into my project which transfers files between laptops using only wireless cards, no LAN required. https://github.com/spieglt/flyingcarpet

I use Syncthing, personally. It usually works pretty great, the only real issues I've seen are with locked down internet connections (the sort which also seem to meter or block VPNs).

"I can't believe that there isn't a simple service to transfer data between my cellphone and my computer without going through the internet."

The correct way to do this is to configure your phone to emulate USB mass storage and then connect with a USB cable.

Your phone looks like a thumb drive. It's the easiest workflow in the world.

Unfortunately, this workflow is off limits because of some licensing requirement from MS for fat32 (or something) which is why neither android nor ios has this very basic, simple feature.

I often first try MTP and when it is acting up again, I'm using adb pull / adb push to do it. Once set up, adb turns on automatically and all you need to do is to invoke the commands on the computer. If USB is unavailable, adb works via the network as well, provided the phone's IP is reachable. However, you need to know the ip address. The only problem really is figuring out the paths, but at least it works and overall I'm wasting less time than with MTP usage.

I seem to remember that there was an app on android that allowed you to access your files via a webserver you could turn off and on. I used that a lot before I got nextcloud.

I'm a bit confused, in what sense is accessing an SSH server not going through the internet? Was the phone connected to the same LAN as the desktop via Wifi?

When pushing files from phone to computer, I setup my Pixel to use AndFTP. The ubiquitous "Share" button offers AndFTP as an option and lists preconfigured destination SSH servers. I upload photos this way to a distinct account (which gets scooped up later by a more privileged script).

What I'm really looking for is a Share button enabled app that can POST arbitrary files to a customizable URL.

Syncthing is fantastic for this (and file transfers between computers over LAN and/or internet), unless you happen to have an iOS phone.

It's because the whole app ecosystem is proprietary and the open source packages aren't as polished. I remember when it was a huge pain to use Bonjour.

It seems like this should be a solved problem but maybe it takes a Mozilla or some other larger entity to push the marketing and the customer support and development to really solve the problem of transferring large files securely.

I'm on Android, and Syncthing is pretty seamless once configured. I just configure my cellphone, my laptop and my desktop to sync a specific directory in both directions.

It's decentralized, end-to-end encrypted and does local discovery of devices on a LAN so it will also works offline.

As long as one device lives and is synced, I have a copy of the files.

There are plenty of cross-platform local file transfer tools available but they all require manual setup and some knowledge of networking. If "without going through the internet" is a requirement, I don't think an easier and secure tool could be made better than what's already available.

What about Dukto [0]?

IMO if something doesn't require the internet connection, it is more likely to be called "software", not a "service".

[0] http://www.msec.it/blog/?page_id=11

You can literally do that; termux will run sshd quite happily. I'm pretty sure there are sftp servers in the app store as well, but I don't really trust them.

I run the reverse; my laptop runs sshd and then I ssh/scp/rsync from termux on my phone. But either way works.

On iOS having a file manager web server is a common workaround, some apps like VLC even have their own. The only issue is that the server stops if you switch apps. There's also iMazing which uses the iTunes protocol and is pretty good, but unfortunately is paid.

With macOS and iOS, Airdrop, as others have stated. For other platform combinations, there is NitroShare[1] which works in almost the same way.

[1]: https://nitroshare.net

SimpleSSHD is a simple ad-free open-source SSH server for your Android phone (available on Google Play). It's very useful. It only supports public-key based authentication, so you can't use a password, however.

termux + woof

woof -i <ip_address> -p <port> <filename>

termux: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.termux&hl=....

woof: http://www.home.unix-ag.org/simon/woof.html

Edit:

1. Allows directory upload/download (tar/gzip/bzip2 compressed)

2. Local file server (doesn't go over the internet)

3. Allows upload form (-U option)

4. Allows file to be served <count> number of times (-c option)

To add to the options (for Android phones):

https://f-droid.org/en/packages/org.primftpd/

There are a few around...I use File Explorer which can actually start an FTP server from my phone (iPhone) that my PC can connect to over LAN. It also can be a client to a remote FTP/file share.

You run a simple HTTP server on your computer, then download your files over Wi-Fi using your phone's browser. Works nicely.

    cd my/directory && python3 -m http.server 80

Plugging in a USB cable still works fine. I think the problem is if its too easy then people will be copying files off of each others phones without permission.

You can try WebTorrent (P2P) based solutions, maybe https://btorrent.xyz could help.

How about https://snapdrop.net/ ?

there is https://snapdrop.net/ but it didnt work for me

KDE connect?

Airdroid

Dozens of responses, and not one mention of Dropbox. Works perfectly for this exact purpose on Android.