Warpinator is a free and open source application designed to make it easy to transfer files between devices connected to the same network. Developed by the Linux Mint team and initially released as part of Linux Mint 20 last year, the application has since been made available as a FlatHub app for other Linux distributions.
Now a third-party developer has created an unofficial Warpinator app for Android, allowing you to quickly and easily transfer files between Android and Linux phones, tablets, PCs, and other devices.
It’s available for download from the Google Play Store, or you can find the source code at GitHub.
Warpinator is designed to make device-to-device transfers simple when two devices are connected to the same network. No internet connection is necessary, and you can use WiFi or a mobile hotspot as a connection.
Just fire up the application and it will automatically discover compatible services on a local network, allow you to transfer files or even entire folders or directories, and transfer multiple files at the same time.
The Android app also adds support for sharing files from other applications, gives you the option of starting the service when your phone or tablet boots, and gives you the option to limit connections to specific people by using a group code.
While the Warpinator app for Android is an unofficial port that was not developed by the Linux Mint team, the Warpinator protocol is open source and the developers had been hoping to see the software ported to other platforms… so it’s unsurprising to see Android app highlighted approvingly in a recent post at the Linux Mint blog.
via OMG Ubuntu and Linux Mint
I like the idea of the app. I can download from android to computer, but not the other way. I follow setup instructions, but can’t get program to accept the download folder as the “Select” button does nothing – even though permissions of folder have been set to write.
“The Android app also adds support for sharing files from other applications, gives you the option of starting the service when your phone or tablet boots, and gives you the option to limit connections to specific people by using a group code.”
But it seems both devices must have Warpinator installed and turned on. That’s not an option in Windows. A free option is to use an SFTP/SCP Android file transfer app and WinSCP (SFTP/SCP comes with SSH by default in Linux/Unix).
On Android there’s an app called WiFi File Explorer (by Dooblou, not SFTP/SCP, free+ads version or $0.99 Pro ad-free version, its in the Play Store). You start the WiFi File Explorer app, it serves a web page which you connect to with a browser via the ip:port address you are given and voila, you now have a bi-directional file manager between the two devices in your browser. The portal is shut down when you quit the app.
Thanks for bringing this to my attention Brad. Very hand and easy to work with!
For this kind of sharing, I have a good experience with https://www.sharedrop.io/ – just a webpage, nothing to install…
Lots of competition in the WebRTC file-transfer space, Wormhole seems pretty slick to me https://wormhole.app/
I would like to suggest Resilio Sync as an alternative. It’s available for Windows and Mac too, not only Linux. it’s also free. It does the same thing — transfer from one device to another using your local connection, or peer-to-peer if you’re not on the same network (interestingly enough, I think it was made by the people who made Skype originally, which was also originally peer-to-peer). I’ve been a happy user for a while and I recommend it.