Cross-platform
An AirDrop alternative that is not limited to Apple
AirDrop is very good at exactly one thing: moving a file between two pieces of Apple hardware standing near each other. The moment one end is a Windows laptop, an Android phone or a Linux desktop, it is not an option at all.
That gap is what sends people back to a cable, a cloud folder or an email to themselves. Poftim is a browser page that closes it: two devices, any two operating systems, a code on one screen and a camera on the other.
The actual problem
Why cross-platform is the hard part
AirDrop can take shortcuts that no cross-platform tool is allowed. It knows both devices, it knows both accounts, and it can open its own radio link between them.
A tool that has to work between an iPhone and a Windows PC has none of that. It cannot assume a shared account, a shared network, a shared operating system or permission to install anything. What is left is the one program both devices already have and both keep up to date: the browser.
So the job becomes three narrower questions. How do two strangers' browsers find each other? How does each one know it reached the right device and not an impostor? And how do the bytes get across without passing through somebody's storage on the way? A QR code answers the first two — it carries the pairing secret from one screen to the other camera, which is a channel an attacker on the network cannot reach into. A direct browser-to-browser connection answers the third.
Side by side
Where the two genuinely differ
Some of these favour Poftim and some favour AirDrop. Both lists are worth reading before you pick one.
- Works between Apple devicesBoth
- Works to Windows, Android or LinuxPoftim only
- Needs the two devices near each otherAirDrop only
- Works across different networks or countriesPoftim only
- Built into the operating system share sheetAirDrop only
- Works without an internet connectionAirDrop only
- Needs a page open on both devicesPoftim
- Anything to install or sign intoNeither
The honest summary: on a desk full of Apple hardware with no internet, AirDrop is the better tool and nothing here changes that. Poftim is for the transfers AirDrop cannot make at all.
In practice
What it feels like to use
Open poftim.app on the device holding the files. A code appears. Point the other device's ordinary camera at it, and the transfer page opens there by itself.
Both screens then show the same short phrase. That phrase is a fingerprint of the key the two devices just agreed on, in a form a person can compare at a glance — it is the equivalent of AirDrop showing you a name and a face before you accept. If the phrases match, you are connected to the right device; if they differ, stop.
After that, either side can send. Files are encrypted before they leave the sending device and travel straight to the other one when the network allows it. The connection disappears when either person closes the page, and nothing about it is kept.
Which devices and browsers are supported Sending from a phone to a computer
What it costs you
No account, and no copy left behind
The reason people reach for AirDrop rather than a cloud folder is usually not speed. It is that a cloud folder means handing the file to a third party and remembering to delete it later.
Poftim keeps that property. There is no upload step and no stored copy, and sending asks for no account and no email address: the servers exist to introduce the two browsers to each other and, when a direct route cannot be built, to forward an encrypted stream they cannot read. Sessions are single-use and expire on their own.
Because Poftim is a web application, you must still trust the code delivered by poftim.app — a real difference from software that ships inside an operating system. The security architecture states that limitation plainly, along with everything else the system can and cannot see.