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Android phones (like Google Pixel phones and Samsung phones) have a feature called Nearby Share. When sharing an item, you can select "Nearby" or "Nearby Share", and it will allow you to share an item to a nearby Android phone or ChromeOS device.

According to Google's blog post, it uses these technologies:

Nearby Share then automatically chooses the best protocol for fast and easy sharing using Bluetooth, Bluetooth Low Energy, WebRTC or peer-to-peer WiFi — allowing you to share even when you’re fully offline.

Screenshot from blog post

Is there a way to share using "Nearby Share" from an Android phone to an Ubuntu device, or vice-versa?

Flimm
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4 Answers4

6

The code for Nearby is available from Google under a open source license.

In a quick search, despite a Linux build being supported, it unfortunately looks like no one has yet packaged it up in a nice easy to use fashion for Ubuntu yet.

Maks
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The nearest that I have been able to find so far, is a work-in-progress project CrossDrop

https://github.com/PlutoHDDev/CrossDrop

CrossDrop is a partial implementation of Google's Nearby Share in Flutter for macOS, iOS and Linux.

Note: At the moment I don't have the time to work on implementing Nearby Share here, even though that's what it's all about. I've started working on it, but I don't have the time to finish it at the moment.

The app lives in your menu bar and saves files to your downloads folder.

Flimm
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Greg Bacchus
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There is another application named rquickshare (available on GitHub). It worked for me. Unfortunately it doesn't (yet) have a command-line-only mode, but at least it works. It is compatible with Android Quick Share / Nearby Share.

zx485
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MarSoft
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0

Try Warpinator. You can share files and folders. It has an app in the play store as well as the app store. Link to Warpinator

sdMickey
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