Sometime i want to send small messages between devices, such as a url, a note, a id, a token, a piece of code, a picture Especially send between phone and laptop.

Some chatting app have self messages such as telegram saved messages, slack (you), Microsoft team…

However i don’t want a bloated chat app that would took few hundred mb on phone, or required to install an app on my pc (linux which make many app broken). I don’t want work chat app too, because self messages can be seen and scanned by employer (yes, a security add on chatbot on slack warm me because i send something like password to myself on slack)

Something like Opera Flow would fit perfectly, but i don’t want opera browser.

  • PoolloverNathan@programming.dev
    1·
    1 month ago

    SSH over Tailscale to Termux (all three free) using private-key authentication — two levels of e2ee, and fairly easy to use.

    For small bits of text, I use one of these, depending on the direction and the source device:

    • Laptop → phone: xclip -o | ssh phone termux-clipboard-set
    • Laptop ← phone: ssh phone termux-clipboard-get | xclip
    • Phone → laptop: termux-clipboard-get | ssh laptop DISPLAY=:0 xclip
    • Phone ← laptop: ssh laptop DISPLAY=:0 xclip -o | termux-clipboard-set

    For larger things, or files, I use scp. For other devices that I haven’t setup beforehand, or can’t set up (e.g. can’t run arbitrary programs), I connect to my phone’s hotspot, and use Total Commander’s Wi-Fi transfer addon for files (both of which are also free). Small strings I just copy over by eye and hope it goes well.