There are occasions when I have something on my phone that I want to have on my PC or vice versa. It could be a link, an image, a screenshot, a document. Really it could be just about any kind of data. For links and some images, I find myself opening Facebook, going to Messenger and pasting the link (image, whatever) in a message to myself and then opening it on the other device. This works fine albeit a bit kludgy. I’ll also use email to move stuff to my phone from my PC but I rarely use it to go the other way, for no particularly good reason. I have a Google drive that I can access from any device but most of the stuff that I put there is sourced from my PC and doesn’t really have a lot of use on my phone. There are exceptions but they’re few and far between. I’m unlikely to want to do much editing to a Google doc on my phone, for example.
So I’m interested in what other people do. I know that the answer will vary depending on what it is that you want to copy so feel free to post any methods for any type files.
I email a lot of stuff to myself. Even fairly sizeable attachments of up to 25 mb or so.
For anything larger, like video files, I use Dropbox or just plug my phone into my laptop and move it over as I would any other file. Occasionally have to perform some sort of conversion, usually to make Apple files usable on a real computer.
As has been already mentioned, Google Drive works great if you have a Windows computer and an Android phone. And Apple products play nicely together, using iCloud.
But if you have an iPhone and a Windows computer, it gets a bit more complicated. Dropbox is certainly an option, as is iTunes installed on both devices connected with a cable.
It’s pretty rare I’ll need to transfer anything between the two. Mostly just phone backgrounds I made on my computer. Used to necessarily do a lot of iTunes-to-iPhone transfers, but iCloud eliminated all of that, thank fucking god.
I used to just use NFC (near field connection) and put my phone next to my laptop, which would immediately queue up a transfer. But for some reason my current cheap PC has no NFC.
So, now my phone and laptop are paired via Bluetooth, so that when I have, say, a photo I want to copy to my laptop, “Bluetooth” shows up as one option when I click “Share”, and I use that to send it. It’s very quick.
ETA: for something really large, I just use Dropbox. For something <25MB but still large, I put it in a draft Yahoo email, but don’t send, and then reopen the draft on another device.
I say this in all seriousness, I got this from a description years ago of how terrorists were sharing messages via yahoo without leaving an email trail…
I mostly use gmail. I don’t even actually send links, I just save drafts.
In theory I could use Google Chrome, but I don’t like the Android version because it doesn’t have extensions. If I had that, I could just share between phones.
In the rare case I have files to send back and forth, I use SMB (i.e. Windows File Sharing). I have an app that can handle that. I also sometimes stream videos to my phone using VLC, which has a built in SMB client.
For a single smallish file, generally a quick email. For larger, one off files, Google Drive, for mass transfers (my MP3 library, non-Amazon ebooks, and the like) USB and drag and drop to my Android phone. (Android and Windows user).
If it’s pictures I just connect the phone to the desktop and drag & drop it to the desktop with a USB cable. Or do the “draft” email method another poster described above.
