NearDrop VS nearby

> I wish quick share (né nearby share) was available on linux (even if via chrome).

I made NearDrop, which is a macOS implementation of Nearby Share: https://github.com/grishka/NearDrop

And of course, someone tried to reimplement it for other OSes: https://github.com/PlutoHDDev/CrossDrop

2. NearDrop

> So what happens is that I gravitate to other ecosystems.

I use a Mac but an Android phone. Android because I require the ability to install apps from arbitrary sources, including piracy. Mac because modern Windows is so contemptuous towards its users, and desktop Linux falls apart unless you know the intricacies of its internals.

Anyway, transferring files between the two was a pain in the butt that eventually grew so immense I reverse engineered Google's Nearby Share and made this: https://github.com/grishka/NearDrop

Though yes, I'm not North American so iMessage is just a non-issue to me. I don't know anyone who uses it. Anyone hardly uses SMS for actual messaging between people, everyone's SMS inbox is 95% OTP codes and various other automatic notifications. Literally everyone who I communicate with is reachable through Telegram.

Nearby Share isn't locked down and, in fact, works just fine with zero Google involvement. Google only needs to be involved for limited device visibility and all the phone number stuff that entails.

Here's the protocol docs I wrote: https://github.com/grishka/NearDrop/blob/master/PROTOCOL.md

I usually use NearDrop which is compatible with nearby sharing. https://github.com/grishka/NearDrop

I don't necessarily back up my android to my Mac. I keep both environments separate, however, you can try this or this looks interesting but seems like some elbow grease involved

I made one recently

Not officially but someone did make this

Did they? I know of https://github.com/google/nearby, but I don't think it's enough to implement. I could be wrong but...

nearby is open, hence my suggestion :) https://github.com/google/nearby

You may want to check this project out: https://github.com/google/nearby. It is in C++, though. It is a medium agnostic socket over bt and wifi. It seems similar to what you are trying to do.

Yeah, I respect the fact that Google made Nearby Share open-source recently (https://github.com/google/nearby-connections).

No plans for Linux right now. You're right that parts of the port would be easier for Linux than Windows. We have a /platform folder (https://github.com/google/nearby-connections/tree/master/cpp/platform/impl) that has abstractions for concepts like 'file', 'lock', and 'bluetooth_classic'. We're having to rewrite a lot of the core files ('file', 'lock', 'thread') for Windows while we could have reused what we already have if we were targeting Linux/MacOS. But rewriting the radio classes ('bluetooth_classic', 'wifi_lan', 'ble') would have had to happen regardless.

See: https://github.com/google/nearby-connections