Selfhosted

KDE Connect

LocalSend on both devices is something I’ve used

On the same network with device discovery localsend can be a good alternative.

It works on most devices, even IOS IIRC

USB cable, KDE Connect, Nextcloud, or Syncthing.

For sending files between a phone and a PC, I use KDE Connect.

For sending files between PCs, I use SSH.

Both are really simple and lightweight tools that normally come preinstalled, and you can use them with no configuration.

Localsend

1. syncthing (file synchronization)
2. kdeconnect (file transfers, clipboard sharing, presentation remote)
3. deskflow (keyboard and mouse sharing)
4. warpinator (one off file sharing)
5. rsync / scp (one off file copies / backups)

Everyone else mentioned most of what I would suggest.

One is missing for your original problem. Localsend. Think airdrop but cross platform. Super useful if you have a mix of devices (iOS, android, windows, etc…)

KDE Connect and SyncThing

There's PairDrop, you can self host it but iirc it transfer via webrtc so as long as the devices 'see' one another there's no mitm.

Syncthing for everything: file transfers, backing up phone photos, synced obsidian vaults, etc.

Nextcloud

Taildrop if you use Tailscale.

Surely I can use Syncthing inside Tailscale but 1. I have to depend on their public discoservers, or 2. I have to host and configure the discoserv myself for every client which is tedious to do

Depends on the scenario, but I'll use KDE Connect, NextCloud, VaultWarden send, or just go old scp.

Honestly, syncthing, croc, vaultwarden send, Send (fork of firefox's send before they discontinued it, still works), Privatebin, etc.

I either use KDE Connect or Pairdrop depending on which devices I am sharing befween

For phone <-> PC I use localsend. If I do PC to PC, possibly even large amounts of files or large files in general I put them on a network drive specifically intended for that purpose

Most of the time I use Nextcloud. If I can't wait for the file to sync I'll use either email or a jump drive depending on which devices I'm moving data between. I

If I remember that I can, I'll occasionally use bluetooth to send from my phone to one of my computers.

kde connect for most things

copyparty for the rest

I use a mix of few things

• kapus.app for starters where a device is completely new and I need to pass some secrets like login to Nextcloud to get keepass or something
• Nextcloud - documents that I rarely access. Some bigger files
• syncthing - for often access files like main keepass. Home server acts as a de-facto hub.
• quick share for an airdrop replacement
• if quick share is not working for some reason I also have a private channel on matrix where I can share some stuff quickly as-hoc

magic wormhole

Copyparty. Or any other web file server.

For one off files, pairdrop is cool.

https://pairdrop.net/

You can self host it.

For files I use syncthing (also for music/photos/notes/etc... syncing files is IMHO the way to go wherever applicable).

For sending links to my PC (eg. articles linked from podcasts' notes) I used to rely on firefox sync, but I'm starting to distance myself from Mozilla so I am gonna experiment with wallabang.

For sending small notes to myself (stuff that I want to sort or act upon when I get to my PC), I'm using signal's "note to self" but I'm investigating alternatives because signal doesn't mark such messages as unread and so sometimes I forget I've sent some.

I really like microbin to copy paste files around.

Syncthing. I connect both devices to same Wi-Fi, copy a file to a shared directory, and wait a minute.

USB Stick and USB wire?

no need to fiddle with an app, nothing to configure, no updates, works even with relatively big file sizes, surprisingly fast?

Mostly Nextcloud, for my Keepass databases that doesn't work though. Because the android client handles files completely different than the desktop versions.

So for that I use syncthing with my home server being a hub, that everything syncs to locally, if I need updates to propagate while I'm not home I VPN in. However I rarely need to do that.

I have sftp setup on my 2 main PCs and a client on my phone (it's not a server). For the rest of the family who have dual Mint/Windows boots I also have warpinator installed on mine and theirs - it's point to point for the enrolled devices but is currently only setup to work within the LAN.

https://warpinator.net/

Primary filesharing is simply the NAS which is visible to all devices on the LAN (can be made available externally but I haven't). This is a recent addition and no one uses warpinator any more.

Edit to clarify I don't have sftp server on phone

FilePizza

https://github.com/kern/filepizza

Used to use syncthing for files, now I just mount smb shares since I finally found how to do it on Android. Also kdeconnect is indispensable tool for me.

feem worked good for me over WiFi, going from grapheneos to Linux mint.

SSH or a USB stick that has USB 3 on one end and USB C on the other

I always have SSH everywhere on everything and I could never understand why anyone ever would want to make it more complicated than that.

I use Bluetooth. Or if a device doesn't have it, I will drop it into my server with scp or filebrowser.

KDE connect, sftp, and dropping files on my NAS is pretty much all I do.

Work stuff uses work methods though, work devices are "on" my network but fully segregated, so its thumb drive and sneakernet or our internal storage instead.

I use ghost commander on my phone to access my NAS on my home network.