KDE Connect

Apple must have recently changed something in iOS, because it used to be easy to just plug your phone in, navigate to the file folder, and move the pictures and videos to your pc. Now, you can only do one picture at a time (videos still work fine for some reason), it’s a downscaled version of it, and it won’t move half the time, only copy. KDE Connect works perfectly to solve that problem. It’s not quite as fast as the direct transferring used to be, but since that’s no longer an option, this gets the job done well. Update 1/5/26: the most recent update has definitely reduced functionality. You used to be able to swipe your finger to select multiple files, but now you have to be extremely careful, otherwise your swipe will close the selection screen. Transfers also just die at a certain point now. Once you get past 20 or so files, transfers will stall out and both the sending and receiving app will have to be closed in order to try again. This didn’t used to be the case. I started the process to report these bugs but this developer makes bug reporting WAY too cumbersome. Bumped rating from 5 stars down to 4.

This app fixes a fundamental problem I’ve always had with doing cross platform work between my mobile device and my desktop computer, that being the easy transfer of files from one to another. Historically, I used services like Google Drive or Dropbox to complete these tasks, but they can be irritating to operate on mobile devices. This app not only offers quick transfer of files, but also offers an easy to operate interface without clutter. I already love the KDE team and what they do for the open source/linux community, and this only strengthens my support for them.

For an open-source app, I am impressed with how good it is. Sending files and photos/videos from my phone to my laptop works seamlessly. And so does using the remote input. A couple things don’t work though: - I can’t receive files from my computer. I use the Gnome extension to send a jpeg to my phone and the KDE Connect iOS app just vibrates, no photo in my camera roll or iCloud Drive. - The “ping” feature only works if the app is open. Looks like the app needs to integrate with Apple’s notification framework to deliver these notifications while the app is in the background.