[HN Gopher] Things You Can Do with KDE Connect on Linux
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Things You Can Do with KDE Connect on Linux
Author : jlpcsl
Score : 107 points
Date : 2023-05-12 14:42 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.makeuseof.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.makeuseof.com)
| 2Gkashmiri wrote:
| I've used the clipboard sync for the past so many years and it
| works "flawlessly" and transparently.
|
| It just works.
|
| Ctrl+c on your PC, paste on your mobile.
|
| Same on the other side.
| red_trumpet wrote:
| Yep, mostly works great. The only thing that bugs me is that
| passwords I copy from KeepassXC get transferred as well, but
| not deleted from mobile.
| argiope wrote:
| I was also concerned about having all my clipboard text
| copied to my mobile, but you can define a keyboard shortcut
| to do that only deliberately
| 2Gkashmiri wrote:
| please share the whole workflow. your comment has me
| excited
| unstuck3958 wrote:
| I can confirm, though it's more like 5:1 hit-miss ratio for me
| (specifically for the copy paste feature) but that could be
| because of agressive battery optimization I do. I also use it
| daily for effortless file transfer, and so much more: it truly
| has enhaced my desktop experience to another level. For
| example, I can play a YouTube video on my PC and have it pause
| when I recieve a phone call - all without any kind of physical
| intervention.
|
| Makes me wonder how many more people who are waiting for
| AirDrop alternatives haven't tried KDE Connect. Or about the
| state of FOSS in general.
|
| Also, feels good to see a fellow Kashmiri on HN :)
| 2Gkashmiri wrote:
| I have battery optimization disabled for KDE apps, itinerary,
| connect, neochat.
|
| That helps I guess and now that you mention it, it's the
| first thing on a new phone so I don't see problems.
|
| The auto-play pause also works transparently.
|
| I'd say the idea of marketing is important. If someone is
| using Linux, they are already in a niche and you kinda get to
| know everything.
|
| OTOH, a random windows user who is using it for the first
| time or someone who uses it in office or for kids, its very
| hard for them to be exposed to Foss apps.
|
| I mean i've installed libreoffice on hundreds of computers
| and people still want "ms office". Same for newbies who want
| first time internet, I show them ddg or something and they
| expect "show me that google".
| cyberbanjo wrote:
| Usually when I show DuckDuckGo to someone I start with the
| bangs, so if they want me to search Google, I show them
| that use !g in my query, then I do a few searches on other
| sites like YouTube !yt and Bing !b and Google Image Search
| !gis so they see what, to me, is the biggest selling point.
| https://duckduckgo.com/bangs?q=
| 2Gkashmiri wrote:
| Yeah. Thanks. I was a long time lurker, read years and only
| back when the incumbents flipped a switch, I had to take some
| action.
| pmontra wrote:
| 9. Mute speakers when receiving or making a call on the phone.
|
| 10. Share files directly between Android devices without going
| through my laptop.
| kej wrote:
| Worth mentioning that KDE Connect can run on Windows as well.
| JohnBerea wrote:
| I tried it out on Windows 10 but the mouse input is so laggy
| it's unusable. Looks like this bug has [already been
| reported](https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=440744).
| kej wrote:
| Yeah, I probably should have included a disclaimer that not
| everything works as well as it does on Linux. I mostly use
| the notification mirroring and file transfers, and those have
| both worked fine for me.
| butz wrote:
| Related question: what is the situation of getting photos from
| iPhone to a Linux PC? Is it possible?
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| If libimobiledevice is installed you can mount the filesystem
| directly in your filemanager and copy them over.
|
| On plug-in you'll have to hit the Trust button on the iOS
| device.
|
| There has been a weird bug for a while, if you see
| "afc://badcafe:3" in the location bar, remove the ":3" at the
| end to see a proper view of the DCIM folder.
| kps wrote:
| KDE Connect. That's the feature I use most. Open KDE Connect on
| the phone, select the target computer, 'Send Photos and
| Videos', select the photos, and hit 'Add'. They end up in a
| configurable directory on the host.
|
| I previously used USB or SFTP apps, but neither is as
| convenient.
| Scarbutt wrote:
| Or any other file, there are methods but not as convenient as
| airdrop.
| kevviiinn wrote:
| I don't understand why someone would choose a computing
| device that traps them as much as apple devices do. Every
| time I've tried to get a file off of one, which is something
| so incredibly basic it should be easy to do, it's next to
| impossible without using their shitty iTunes software. Why
| can't a file system just be a file system? Why does it need
| to be this nonsense?
|
| The last time I tried this I was mounting an iPod as a
| filesystem and everything had nonhuman read bale names and
| there were a bunch of weird formats.
|
| Why on earth is apple so hostile to users?
| donkeybeer wrote:
| Does the iphone let you run an http or ftp server on the
| device? If so its actually alright, I prefer copying files
| over lan over fiddling with cables anyways generally. But
| it is funny how copying files with a cable is not possible
| with it.
| Scarbutt wrote:
| What do you suggest? I'm happy with my recent switch to
| linux desktop but for phones there aren't many options, is
| android any better?
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| > is android any better
|
| In this specific respect, most definitely yes.
| kevviiinn wrote:
| Absolutely, android phones allow you to actually control
| the user space software on the device. The whole baseband
| processor thing is another topic but overall android
| allows much greater ownership and control
| ews wrote:
| No idea if it would work on iphone, but on my android setup, I
| use syncthing to sync photos from my phone to my NAS server.
| mmh0000 wrote:
| If you use icloud, you can backup all your icloud photos
| locally.
|
| Checkout icloud_photos_downloader[1], they have a docker
| container that is drop-dead simple to use.
|
| I run this[3] about once a month, I could probably automate it,
| but that feel like it'll take more time than it'll save[2].
|
| [1] https://github.com/icloud-photos-
| downloader/icloud_photos_do...
|
| [2] https://xkcd.com/1319/
|
| [3] #!/bin/bash mkdir
| "$(pwd)"/{photos,cookies} 2> /dev/null if [[ -z
| "${ICLOUD_PASSWORD}" ]]; then exit 1 fi
| podman container run -it --rm --name icloud \ -v
| $(pwd)/photos:/data \ -v $(pwd)/cookies:/cookies \
| -e TZ=America/Boise \ icloudpd/icloudpd:latest \
| icloudpd --directory /data \ --cookie-directory
| /cookies \ --folder-structure {:%Y/%Y-%m-%d} \
| --username mysuperduper@username.com \ --password
| "${ICLOUD_PASSWORD}" \ --size original
| adidevsoft wrote:
| Disclaimer: We created this app. Please don't roast us. It's
| exactly related to the question asked here.
|
| This app was born out of the frustration that airdrop is super
| useful but not available everywhere.
| https://quickit.adidevsoft.com/
| jpeeler wrote:
| Can you do an entire photo collection or is it mostly
| designed for small groups of files?
| duffyjp wrote:
| Point #3 (Using Your Phone as a Mouse and Keyboard) mentions
| utilizing the gyroscope. I've had that idea in the back of my
| head for years and years and am super excited somebody actually
| built it. Looking forward to trying this out.
|
| If it works well enough to actually use I'm gonna be turning
| heads at the next in person meeting. :)
| p2hari wrote:
| On my mac, the connection keeps disconnecting. Only way is to
| restart on mobile(android) and then on mac. Does anyone
| experience this? Any solutions.
| isthisfoss wrote:
| Does GNOME have a similar feature? I am not a big fan of how busy
| KDE is.
| kadoban wrote:
| You should be able to use KDE Connect without the rest of KDE.
| I don't know how heavy the deps are, but it should really just
| be disk space wasted mostly.
| unstuck3958 wrote:
| KDE Connect is not restricted to KDE Plasma. It's an app, so it
| is available for Windows, Linux, and even iOS.
| smoldesu wrote:
| GSConnect was a rewrite for the GNOME shell, but I think it's
| been 'depreciated' in favor of Valent. You can try both and see
| which you prefer:
|
| GSConnect:
| https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/1319/gsconnect/
|
| Valent: https://valent.andyholmes.ca/
| freedomben wrote:
| Have you used Valent? Is it fairly feature comparable to KDE
| Connect? I use real KDE Connect on Gnome but it's pretty
| clumsy
| davikr wrote:
| I use KDE Connect to share books and papers from my computer to
| my tablet, so I can annotate them with a digital pen. It's pretty
| nice.
|
| Occasionally I'll do the same from my phone, and it works as long
| as you share your mobile connection.
| unstuck3958 wrote:
| KDE Connect is a great piece of software. Everyone I recommended
| it to uses it almost daily.
|
| It makes me wonder about the state of FOSS software: there are
| plenty of genuinely good FOSS apps that can, in theory, be a part
| of a FOSS "ecosystem." But not many people actually know about
| them or use them.
|
| While I am still curious to know why this is, it seems like
| "advertisement" is still the greater predictor of software usage
| than anything else (including functionality and ease-of-use).
| Which is sad (especially because _FOSS apps get better the more
| people use them_ ).
| donkeybeer wrote:
| Thats because the point is we should not need an "ecosystem" in
| the first place in the sense that it is meant regarding
| commercial products. Everything is generic files and tools that
| can operate on them. No special "drmed/cloud app only file" or
| weird hoops to jump through to transfer files like iphones etc.
| You can use any tool you want to copy data or work on it.
| "Ecosystems" in commercial products are necessary because they
| don't want to make the data available generically so they build
| you special tools that only work with their stuff or make a
| deal to provide a limited interface with another company's
| product etc.
|
| Edit: We use terms like 'js ecosystem' or 'python ecosystem'
| but that means a different thing from what ecosystem generally
| means with commercial products.
| donkeybeer wrote:
| That a program like kde connect is necessary to communicate
| between a bunch of general purpose computers is the real
| funny thing. Its great that this software exists, but the
| reason it has to exist in the first place is depressing.
| JohnFen wrote:
| It's not necessary to do that, it's just convenient. I
| haven't tried KDE connect because I assumed that it was
| cloud-connected and I already do most of that using other
| tools anyway.
|
| But KDE Connect would certainly be a more convenient
| method. Now that I know (or think?) it doesn't depend on
| third party servers, I'll give it a try.
| donkeybeer wrote:
| The mouse sharing with phones sounds interesting, I would
| like to try out kde connect for that feature.
| jrm4 wrote:
| There's a lot of space between "necessary" and
| "convenient" here. Sure, if you know how to root the
| phone and program it you can do literally anything.
|
| But the bigger and more important point is that Android
| and Apple (whoever the parties are) have perhaps
| subconsciously colluded to exclude simple and important
| functions on our phones -- which are no longer "general
| purpose computers" -- if ANY of these machines are. E.g.
| anything convenient that the Apple ecosystem machines can
| do should be readily available anywhere.
|
| Or to better generalize it, how I use my phone and
| computer ought to be limited only by the machine and my
| imagination. There should nearly literally be no such
| thing as a feature I wish for that I can't have, period.
| jjbinx007 wrote:
| Unfortunately my recent experience with the Windows version was
| negative. I installed KDE Connect so I could link it with my
| Steam Deck but the text on the Windows version was completely
| screwed up to the extent that the UI was completely unusable.
|
| After Googling it seems a work around was to disable hardware
| acceleration but I was reluctant to do that.
|
| I wanted to revert back to an earlier version (which apparently
| didn't suffer from thsi bug) but there's no repository for old
| versions.
| klntsky wrote:
| > While I am still curious to know why this is
|
| No marketing budget.
|
| > it seems like "advertisement" is still the greater predictor
| of software usage than anything else
|
| It is not. It's only a blocker if an app doesn't have any
| presence at all.
|
| > FOSS apps get better the more people use them
|
| Not true. Only users who report bugs bring value.
| kps wrote:
| > _6. Locating Your Misplaced Phone [...] This feature is a great
| alternative if you don't have an Apple Watch that you can use to
| ping your iPhone._
|
| That doesn't actually work for iPhones, since (per Apple
| restrictions) KDE Connect has to be running in the foreground to
| do anything useful.
|
| It's still my go-to file transfer app, although it would be nice
| if it were available from the iOS share button.
| hn_throawlles wrote:
| 9. setting up wireguard and kde-connecting over the internet!
|
| --
|
| > 6. Locating Your Misplaced Phone
|
| I've had an issue many times, in which my phone (possibly to save
| battery?) is not KDE connected when I need it; usually after not
| touching it for several hours...
|
| So I recommend disabling energy saving feature for the KDE
| connect app. Nonetheless, it's strange, I blame Android for
| optimizing this functionality into uselessness (for battery's
| sake probably, but I really dislike this new trend of
| "uncofigurable" devices).
| carlhjerpe wrote:
| I'd love KDE to implement a server dependent version with both
| a subscription and a self-hosted version. If I understand push
| notifications properly they could be used to keep it sleeping
| until it's "notification time", connect and do it's thing.
| Since there's always a push connection active with your phone
| it wouldn't increase battery consumption
| MayeulC wrote:
| I agree, I'd love KDE Connect to support UnifiedPush.
| tkanarsky wrote:
| Tailscale works great for this use case, in me experience. Very
| plug-n-play.
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(page generated 2023-05-12 23:02 UTC)