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Getting files on and off of a phone is shockingly hard. Shockingly. It's even worse on an iPhone, if you don't have a mac. To get my photos from my iPhone to my PC, I had to first upload them to iCloud and then download them again. My phone and computer are, like, a foot away from each other but I had to send the photos across the country to some server and back just to look at them.

by engeljohnb17 hours ago|

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Everyone emails themself stuff, that's normal. The weird part is how often will you ever need to email it specifically from your laptop, but it's already on your phone? If it's on your phone and you need to email it to someone, couldn't you just email from your phone?

by bombcar2 hours ago|

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Biggest use case is needing to send a work email but only having the photo on your phone (and you don't have work email on your phone).

by lojban13 hours ago|

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Have you tried using the Gmail app? It's missing a whole bunch of features. For example, you can't even insert hyperlinks with custom text. For images, I often don't want to send an image at its full resolution. Rescaling images is a task that's much easier to do on a laptop.

by engeljohnb13 hours ago|

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In that case, have I got a laptop for you...

by xp8418 hours ago|

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Oh, I use use AirDrop to myself for this. Yes, given my photo library syncs to iCloud, just opening Photos seems like it makes sense on a fast WAN which I sort-of do have, but of course, iCloud syncs only happen when the device decides the mood is just right, and can't be triggered manually, because I guess that would just be 'clutter' in the UI.

by Marsymars14 hours ago|

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What drives me absolutely nuts about AirDrop is that it's only device-to-device even if devices are on the same WAN.

My wife and I have home offices at opposite sides of the house with hardwired desktops and Wi-fi APs, but we can't AirDrop to each other as we're out of range for it.

by kps17 hours ago|

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KDE Connect may work for you. (You don't have to use KDE.)

by asimovDev7 hours ago|

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I remember in late 10s I could just connect my iPhone to a windows machine and the photos folder would be right there, mounted, with the typical iOS filenames for each picture. Is this a false memory? Maybe I was on a Mac and just forgot?

by daemin7 hours ago|

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I'm pretty sure you can still do that, you can at least with Android phones, but it does require a physical cable.

by deltoidmaximus56 minutes ago|

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It works on my bargain basement Moto G that way

by jeroenhd17 hours ago|

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That's mostly an iPhone problem. Plugging in an Android phone still works, and wireless exchange with QuickShare also works on most devices. With Google reverse engineering Airdrop, I hope they can get the Android <-> macOS experience to finally work correctly soon as well.

by swat53510 hours ago|

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Photos taken on iPhone are automatically synchronized with iCloud.. I guess you can just go to iCloud.com and download them on your PC?

If you want to send a photo to your friend from your iPhone, just click on the photo and click the "share" button, then you have many options, including sending it via Email..

What am I missing?

by array_key_first9 hours ago|

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The synchronization is opaque - more than once I checked for photos and they weren't uploaded yet. Also downloading stuff is very, very slow compared to wired transfers, and logging into Apple anything on your web browser is a huge pain in the ass.

by bsimpson18 hours ago|

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My only real use of Google Keep is as a cross-device clipboard.

by adolfojp15 hours ago|

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LocalSend works really well across platforms in a LAN, no uploading to some server required.

by mavamaarten18 hours ago|

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I'm super techy but I admit that I just use Signal to send me a "Note to self" whenever I need a file from my phone on my computer quickly. For images I just use immich, but texting myself is honestly the quickest way for files because the experience is indeed terrible.

by flal_17 hours ago|

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Same here with the Telegram "Saved Messages" ( the same stuff as Signal's )

by dmonitor17 hours ago|

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I personally just have a discord with myself as the only member. With their webhooks API you can even automate the PC side.

by nnm18 hours ago|

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I emailed myself many times to transfer some files between phone and computer. I would say at least once every week.

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deleted

by catlikesshrimp15 hours ago|

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It is a solved problem https://f-droid.org/packages/com.ismartcoding.plain/

There is also localsend, but plainapp needs to run in only one device.

by extraduder_ire1 hours ago|

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I've been using pairdrop.net (fork of snapdrop, which got bought out) a lot recently. Only needs a web browser on either end, and doesn't take any prepwork.

Can be self-hosted, if that's a concern.

by zeroonetwothree17 hours ago|

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You can just use Dropbox or equivalent.

by HarHarVeryFunny19 hours ago|

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They should have just said "USE it on your laptop", not email it.

I all the time use my phone as a camera (esp. for coin photography) than e-mail the photos to myself as the most convenient way to get them on my desktop where I can edit them with GIMP etc.

by unholiness18 hours ago|

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I just open photos.google.com and grab them. No need to fiddle on my phone.

When on wifi, the photo backup upload starts immediately. If it doesn't (possibly due to your settings, this used to be my issue) you can manually open the photos app and tap the backup now button.

by HarHarVeryFunny18 hours ago|

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I'm not sure if that's an option for me, since I'm not using the regular camera app - I'm using Halide which is better suited to macro (coin) photography.

Google Drive would be another option to transfer, but would be more work (about same to "share" as email, but less convenient to access on desktop).

The e-mail way is actually quite convenient since on the desktop you can just download all the photos you sent in one go - they appear as a zip file that you can then just extract to your working directory, rather than having to save one at a time.

by projektfu1 hours ago|

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It will work if you ask Photos to back up halide's files.

by olsondv19 hours ago|

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It’s a poor example. Recently, I did have to email myself photos taken with my phone to access them on my laptop. Would be nice if they were automatically synced. It’s work phone and laptop so I could have gone through OneDrive or Box but just as inconvenient as email.

by dmix17 hours ago|

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These are usually targeted at kids and newbies. My mom would 100% appreciate that feature for photos and pdfs. She still struggles with files on Windows and managing files are even less clear on chromebook.

by famouswaffles17 hours ago|

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Yeah I and i suspect a lot of others email myself little files all the time because surprisingly that's the most convenient way to get those files quickly from phone to laptop.

by overgard12 hours ago|

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I do that all the time with my iPhone and my windows machine, sadly. Still not a particularly compelling feature, just speaks to how sad our modern ecosystem is.

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deleted

by zeafoamrun15 hours ago|

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I feel like very much not the target market for this. Tokyo Vintage Shopping Trip? LOL

I got mad when I bought a Chromebook thinking it was a cheap laptop I could install any OS on only to find it was boatloader locked and the model I bought hadnt been cracked yet. Say nothing of all of Google's recent practices with Android. This whole thing just sounds like the plague.