Hi everyone,
I currently use Telegram to send photos, PDFs and text messages between my Android phone and my Debian laptop. It works, but everything goes through a third-party server, and I would like a fully local, privacy-friendly alternative.
What I need: Send photos, PDFs and other files in both directions (phone ↔ laptop) Send short text messages or clipboard content Works locally
Thanks for any advice and experience!


Syncthing is local and doesn’t use a cloud. It will sync directories between a linux machine and an android phone.
the desired use is not a good use case for syncthing. i use it for things like syncing my game saves between computers or anything that works like dropbox.
it is overkill for one-off file transfer and creates a dependency that probably is not desired. if mirroring is the need, then it is the right tool - if you don’t have your own NAS with a drive/dropbox service, which is just cleaner.