The iPhone to Linux AirDrop Alternative You Need

Yes, all twelve of you

A match made in hell. Photo by the author.

One of the best features of being in the Apple ecosystem is the effortless file transfer between devices via AirDrop; anyone who uses it understands how easy it is to take for granted. Sadly, it of course only works between Apple devices. While there are comparable solutions for the Android + Windows combo, anyone who chooses — for whatever reason — to pair an iPhone with a Linux PC are out of luck — understandably, Apple prefers to pretend the penguin doesn’t exist. Fortunately there are a range of third party alternatives and in this guide, I’ll show you a few of the best ones.

Here’s the list of options we’ll look at, in order of increasing complexity:

• 2023 Update: LocalSend
• 2022 Update: KDE Connect
• Snapdrop
• USB Cable
• SSH
• Bonus: OpenDrop

Note that while the goal is to find the most friction-less file transfer method, none of these options are perfect AirDrop replacements; each has its pros and cons so the ‘best’ one to pick depends on your needs.

2023 Update: LocalSend

This article was originally written in 2021, and a new option has recently been…