Title: Easy text transmission from computer to smartphone | |
Author: Solène | |
Date: 25 March 2021 | |
Tags: opensource | |
Description: | |
# Introduction | |
Today I will share with you a simple way I found to transmit text from | |
my computer to my phone. I often have to do it, to type a password, | |
enter an url, copy/paste a message or whatever reasons. | |
# Using QR codes | |
The best way to get a text from computer to a smartphone (that I am | |
aware of) is scanning a QR code using the camera. By using the command | |
qrencode (I already wrote about this one), xclip and feh (a picture | |
viewer), it is possible to generate QR code on the fly on the screen. | |
Is it as simple as running the following command, from a menu or a key | |
binding: | |
```shell script | |
xclip -o | qrencode -o - -t PNG | feh -g 600x600 -Z - | |
``` | |
Using this command, xclip will gives the clipboard to qrencode which | |
will create a PNG file on stdout and then feh will display it on a 600 | |
by 600 window, no temporary file involved here. | |
Once the picture is displayed on the screen, you can use a scanner | |
program on your phone to gather the content, I found "QR & Barcode | |
Scanner" to be really light, fast and usable with its history, | |
available on F-Droid. | |
QR & Barcode Scanner on F-Droid | |
Composing a quite long text on your computer and sharing it to the | |
phone can be done with sending the text to xclip and then generate the | |
QR code. | |
# Going further | |
When it comes to sharing data between my phone and my computer, I love | |
"primitive ftpd" which is a SFTP/FTP server for Android, it works out | |
of the box and allow secure transfers over Wifi (use SFTP please!). | |
primitive ftpd on F-Droid | |
For simple transfers, I use "Share to Computer" that will share a file | |
or a group of files as a zip on a temporary http server, it is then | |
easy to connect to it to save the file. | |
Share to Computer on F-Droid | |
For sending SMS through my phone but from my computer, I use the | |
program KDE Connect (it has to be installed on phone and computer), I | |
wanted to write about it for a long time but it's not easy to explain | |
how to get it to work and uneasy to explain its usage. But it allows me | |
to receive phone notifications on my computer and also send SMS. I have | |
simple aliases in my shell like "mom-sms hello are you ?" to ease my | |
use of SMS. When possible, don't use SMS, it's not secure. The program | |
does a lot more than sending SMS, like using the smartphone as a remote | |
touchpad as one example. | |
KDE Connect on F-Droid |