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If you connect your Android device to a Macbook, you will notice that your phone is not recognized. Unlike Windows, Apple’s Mac is not so friendly to Android devices. Of course, you can install Android File Transfer provided by Google and connect your phone to Mac. But it is kinda cumbersome and does work so well. In this post, I want to share several ways to transfer files between Android and Mac wirelessly.

I have tested the three different methods listed below on my Mac and Android. For your reference, the device info is:

Mac: Macbook Pro 2018 with the latest macOS Mojave (version 10.14)
Phone: OnePlus 3T with Android 8.0.0

Bluetooth
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In order to share files between Android and Mac using Bluetooth, you need to set up Mac first. Open the system preference setting and open the Sharing panel. Turn on the Bluetooth Sharing service and set up the destination folder properly. Then you can share files via Bluetooth easily.

Pros and Cons
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The advantage of this method is that you do not need to install any additional software since Bluetooth is the standard utility across different OS. The disadvantage is also obvious: the file transfer speed is slow. I have observed that the transfer speed is about 100kb/s. For large files, it will take a lot of time. Unless you are always transferring small files, I would not recommend using Bluetooth.

KDE connect and Soduto
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From the KDE connect GitHub repo:

KDE Connect is a multi-platform app that allows your devices to communicate (eg: your phone and your computer).

First, you need to install kdeconnect for Android from the Google Play store. There is no official package for Mac. Fortunately, there is a software called Soduto which is like KDE connect. So you can install Soduto on Mac instead.

After installing these applications, you should make sure that your Mac and Android device is connected to the same wireless router. Open kdeconnect on your phone, you should be able to see your Macbook automatically like the image below.

Tap the Macbook device and let your phone pair with it. Now, you can browse files on your phone easily and share files freely.

With kdeconnect, you can not only share files, but also share the clipboard between your Android phone and Mac. When you copy text on one device, it will be automatically synced to another device. Amazing, isn’t it? The transfer speed is also high.

The disadvantage is that you need to install an application both on your phone and on your Mac.

MiXplorer
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The third way is to install MiXplorer file manager on your phone. MiXplore is a light-weight yet powerful file manager. With it, you can create FTP server or http servers on your phone, which your Mac can later connect to.

Create a HTTP server
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Open MiXplorer and click top-right button and click servers… menu, you will be prompted to choose a server type. Choose Start HTTP Server.

You will see a notification on your notification bar like the following:

Open the HTTP address in your browser, and you should be able to see all the files on your phone. Click a file to download it to your Mac¹. To upload files to your phone, first choose a file and then hit the upload button in the interface.

The transfer speed is high and the process is stable.

Create a FTP server
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Like the way to create a HTTP server, we can also create a FTP server on our phone.

After starting the FTP server, we need to connect to it to share files. To connect to the FTP server. We need a FTP client. You may try the free software such as cyberbuck or filezilla. Let’s take filezilla for an example. Install this application, open it and set up the FTP server, you will see an interface like the image below:

The file transfer speed is also quite high.

Conclusion
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In this post, I introduced three ways to share files between Android device and Mac wirelessly. Overall, I recommend the second (using Soduto) and third way (using MiXplorer), since these two methods can all guarantee high transfer speed. If you need to exchange texts, URLs and other small text snippet between Android and Mac frequently, maybe Soduto suits you better.