I stopped using AirDrop and Quick Share after discovering this free, open-source alternative

Published Oct 27, 2026, 10:30 AM EDT Patrick O'Rourke is XDA's News Editor and Entertainment Segment Lead. Previously, he was Pocket-lint's Editor-in-Chief, the Editor-in-Chief of Canadian tech publication MobileSyrup, and earlier in his career, he worked as the technology editor at the Financial Post and Postmedia. He's based in Toronto. Over the past 15 years, he's written thousands of articles. Patrick has also interviewed dozens of tech industry executives and covered GDC, E3, Gamescom, WWDC, Apple keynotes, Samsung Unpacked events and more. Patrick has a BA in journalism from Toronto Metropolitan University. At this point, I can't believe it took me this long to discover LocalSend. I often move files between devices across different operating systems. Usually it's several PC port decompilation-based games, or my always-growing collection of ROMs and emulators. Sometimes I'm transferring ROMs and emulators from my ROG Xbox Ally X20 (or whatever Windows 11 handheld I'm testing) to my iPhone Duo or Galaxy Z Fold 8, or in other situations, I'm transferring a bunch of photos between various operating systems, including iOS, macOS, and sometimes Windows 11. In the past, I've used Apple's AirDrop on the iPhone and MacBook, Quick Share for Android devices, and Google Drive to share files across operating systems. But it's often needlessly convoluted, and Google Drive isn't exactly the best platform these days. File uploads frequently take forever, and I've never been a fan of larger files getting broken up into parts and zipped (sometimes even multiple small files get compressed). I've even used SD cards and done things the even more old-school way with a very slow USB 2.0 stick. Thankfully, LocalSend streamlines this process entirely and gives me one simple app I can use across macOS, Windows 11, iPhone, Android, and there's even a web-based app. LocalSend takes a no-frills approach to sending files between devices As far as multi-platform solutions go, it's the best I've found LocalSend is open-source, totally free, and end-to-end encrypted using HTTPS. You don't even need to create an account or log in to use the platform. Simply put, it works, and over the past few weeks, I've come to rely on it. I know what you're thinking; there has to be some catch, right? As far as I can tell, there really doesn't seem to be. This is free software that actually does one thing very well. Sure, I could use a self-hosted alternative and run a different file-sharing service through Docker or a NAS, but I'm a simple dude with not much time on my hands these days, and I really appreciate how basic LocalSend is A key thing to note is that LocalSend isn't designed for sharing files across different networks. Instead, it's localized to the network you're connected to. This means that whatever devices you're sending files between need to be on the same internet connection. It also doesn't require a server and lets two devices communicate over a local network. It's the sort of app I've installed on pretty much every device I use regularly, so it's available if I need it. LocalSend has been available since roughly 2022, with a major technical overhaul in August 2026 that improved performance and streamlined its user interface, which is primarily built with Flutter, a free open-source app development framework created by Google. Setting up the transfer process takes just a few seconds Whether it's Windows 11 to macOS, or Android to iOS, it's easy and quick In one recent situation, I needed to send several retro game PC ports from my ROG Xbox Ally X to my ROG Xbox Ally X20, including Dusklight's Zelda: Twilight Princess, Ship of Harkinian's Zelda: Ocarina of Time, and 2ship2harkinian's Zelda: Majora's Mask. I saved all these files in Windows 11's Documents, each in its own folder. First, I opened LocalSend on both devices, tapped Send on the ROG Ally X, selected Folder, and selected all the folders for the old-school ports. Next, I switched to the ROG Xbox Ally X20 and selected Receive in LocalSend. Eventually, a random, auto-generated name (you can also rename devices if you want), like Efficient Broccoli, shows up, indicating the other device is ready to send the file. I tapped it, confirmed the transfer, and watched the progress bar complete. If it's a small file that's a few MB, this transfer process takes just a couple of seconds, but if you're sending several gigabytes of data, you're in for a bit of a wait (for example, 60GB took about 15-20 minutes). Over the past few weeks, I've sent files as small as 100KB and as large as roughly 120GB. In every instance so far, LocalSend worked perfectly. Sometimes it takes a while for the receiving device to pop up, but usually it appears within a few minutes (pressing refresh sometimes helps). I typically load up whatever I'm sending and then wait a bit — the randomly generated device name eventually shows up, regardless of what device I'm using. While I've only used LocalSend on my home network, the app reportedly has issues with firewalls, VPNs, and Guest networks, so that's something to consider. I like LocalSend so much I'm considering ditching AirDrop and Quick Share entirely, along with my habit of uploading files to Google Drive just to move them between operating systems. It's an impressive open-source project that's a viable alternative to more proprietary options from Apple, Google, and Microsoft. LocalSend