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142 lines
8.1 KiB
Plaintext
142 lines
8.1 KiB
Plaintext
Episode: 4397
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Title: HPR4397: Transfer files from desktop to phone with qrcp
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Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr4397/hpr4397.mp3
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Transcribed: 2025-10-26 00:14:37
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---
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This is Hacker Public Radio Episode 4397 for Tuesday 10 June 2025.
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Today's show is entitled, Transfer Files from Desktop to Phone with QRCP.
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It is hosted by Klaatu and is about 9 minutes long.
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It carries a clean flag.
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The summary is, use a QR encoded URL to quickly share a file on your local network.
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I have found a really quick way of getting data from your computer to your phone.
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And it is great.
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I have been using it a lot for, I think, probably two or three years now.
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And I figured I should probably talk about it on Hacker Public Radio.
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So here it is.
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It's called QRCP.
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It is a project that I found from an article that found it on GitHub.com.
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So GitHub.com slash Claudio D. Angelus slash QRCP.
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And that is, of course, QR as in a QR code and CP as in the copy command.
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To send a file from your computer to your phone, all you have to do is type in QRCP and then
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give it the path to a file that you want to send.
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So in this case, I'll do a QRCP example.jpeg and hit return.
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And it renders a QR code right there in your terminal.
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It's really, it's surprising, like if you're not expecting it, you get this big QR code
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on your screen.
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In your just standard terminal, and I'm talking about any terminal, like a QR XVT even can
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do this.
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Maybe some kind of fancy, fancy terminal emulator or anything like that.
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It's, I mean, it is a terminal emulator, but it doesn't have to be anything fancy.
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It doesn't have to be like GNOME terminal or something.
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It can just be an old standard terminal emulator.
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Hit return.
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It renders a QR code in your terminal and then you can point your phone at it.
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And as long as you have some kind of QR scanner on your phone, I use QR scan from
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FDroid to kind of interrupt the process and ensure that after I've scanned a thing, I'm
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aware that I've scanned a thing.
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So you scan the QR code, you press accept to continue.
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I've checked the link and want to visit the website.
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And then the file that you have asked to transfer is downloaded to your phone.
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How is this possible?
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Well, it's quite simple actually.
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So if you, if you, if you do this, QRCP example.jpg or whatever, and then go over to a
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different terminal and do like a netstat command, netstat-tcp-dash-listening-tcp-listening-tcp-listening.
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Let's do dash dash, what would it be, tool pin, tool pin program-dash- I feel like there's
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one more that I need here.
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Oh, you can not need UDP program.
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Maybe that's it actually.
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Yeah, let's just do that.
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TCP listening program.
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So netstat-tcp-dash-listening-tcp-dash-program.
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Yep, that's it.
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You do see eventually if you scan through this list of open, open ports that exist, that
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on port 8080 of your local host is a, in my case, PID 13730 and the program name is QRCP.
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So QRCP has simply created a little HTTP server running on your machine, pointing to exactly
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the file that you have provided it.
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Now, you don't even have to open up netstat to see all of that.
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You can, I mean, QRCP does tell you what the address is.
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In case you, for some reason, don't want to scan the thing or cannot scan the thing.
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It tells you you can go to HTTP colon slash slash and then whatever your IP address is, like
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let's say 192.168.0.5, colon 8080 slash send slash, in this case, Y in 44.
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But in another case, it would be, I don't know, I 046 or whatever, it'll auto-generate
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something pseudo-random so that you can provide a relatively short URL really to go to.
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And because that URL provides exactly that file, the download just starts automatically on
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whatever device you're going to that URL on.
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So it is really, really handy.
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And if you're just sitting at work or something like that and you just, you just need to get
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like this stupid file from there to here and you just don't want to be bothered putting
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it on some kind of, I don't know, shared cloud thing and then going on your phone and going
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over.
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It's just so, so quick, you just point your phone at your screen and you're, you've initiated
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the process.
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It is really, I mean, obviously your phone needs to be on the same network, right?
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I mean, it isn't, it is a local transfer, not a local, but it's a local network transfer.
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It is not, the QR code does not contain, in other words, the data itself.
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You are not transmitting the data through QR.
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The QR is just the URL that point on the local network that points to the file that you
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want to transfer and then your phone knows to, that it follows that QR code, assuming
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you permit it to do so, to that, that URL and, and the only thing there instead of being
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a web page or something is the file that you want to transfer.
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And so it transfers itself to the thing requesting it.
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It's really, really brilliantly simple.
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It's fast, it's convenient.
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I love it.
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I've been using it a lot lately.
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And I do have other tools available to me.
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I've got KDE Connect on my home computer.
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I've got sort of a KDE Connect hybrid thing for GNOME, called GNOME Connect, which actually
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uses the KDE backend, or the KDE Connect backend, rather, on my work laptop.
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So I do have other methods of doing the same thing with varying degrees of integration.
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The KDE Connect stuff is brilliantly integrated in a plasma desktop.
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And honestly, I very rarely use QRCP on my home desktop.
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But on my work laptop, GNOME Connect isn't quite as polished as, as KDE Connect on plasma.
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So sometimes it is just easier to do QRCP, or sometimes I'm helping a friend with something.
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And we, it gets to the point where it's like, okay, we're going to need to be transferring
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the transfer, some files back and forth quickly.
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Let's just get QRCP installed, or maybe it's already installed if it's a computer that
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I touch often.
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And then we can transfer files.
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And like I say, it doesn't really have to be to your phone.
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The QRCP application does expose the URL for you.
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So you can just type in the address, the port, slash send, slash whatever randomized code.
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You've been provided.
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And then you're still downloading the file quickly over your local network.
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Really, really simple.
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Installation is equally, I guess, as simple.
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You go to github.com slash Claudio D Angelus slash QRCP, or you just do an internet search
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for github.com and QRCP, you'll get there pretty quickly, I feel.
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It's on, at the time of this recording, it's on 0.11.6.
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And the, the releases are numerous.
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There's obviously the source code itself that you can just download and compile.
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I mean, there's also a dev package, an RPM package, a tar.gz, and what do they call
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it, a macOS package, and apparently a Windows package.
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I can only vouch for the Linux versions of this.
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I've never used it on any other platform, but I mean, it seems to imply that it would
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work on other platforms.
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I don't know if there's further setup required on other platforms, or if it really is just
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as easy as it is on Linux, I'm not sure.
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You could try it out if you have access to other platforms.
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Either way, QRCP makes transferring data, I think, sort of almost as easy as you kind
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of want it to be.
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Like if I always dream of just kind of like a system where you can just, I don't know,
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where there's just no interaction somehow required.
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Like I just want to kind of like press my phone up to the screen or something and sort
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of rub it around until the data gets into it or something.
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You know, like something really easy, and QRCP is almost that easy.
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I mean, you do have to type in the command and you have to point your phone at your screen
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to scan the QR code, but beyond that, that's it.
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It is very fast, it's very simple, it feels very magical, although it clearly isn't.
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It is a nice little application though.
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So if you've never heard of QRCP, now you have, you should go try it out.
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Thanks for listening.
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You have been listening to Hacker Public Radio at HackerPublicRadio.org.
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Today's show was contributed by a HBR listener like yourself.
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If you ever thought of recording podcasts, click on our contribute link to find out how
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easy it really is.
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Hosting for HBR has been kindly provided by an onsthost.com, the internet archive and
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our sings.net.
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On this advice status, today's show is released under Creative Commons, Attribution 4.0 International
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License.
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