PairDrop for Android is an open-source Android client that lets you quickly send files from your phone to a PC or other devices over a local network using the PairDrop and self-hosted Snapdrop services.

What it is

PairDrop for Android is a native Android application, written in Java and released under the GPL-3.0 licence, that wraps the browser-based PairDrop file sharing solution at https://pairdrop.net/. PairDrop itself is a free and open source local file sharing service that works entirely in the browser and connects Windows, Linux, Android, iPhone and Mac devices on the same network; the Android app is the client that integrates it into the operating system so files can be sent from within other apps directly through the standard Android share sheet.

The concrete problem it addresses is the everyday friction of moving one file from a phone to a computer. The README frames the alternatives it replaces: USB as "old fashioned", Bluetooth as "too much cumbersome and slow", and emailing a file to yourself as a chore. Instead, the app provides a share target inside other Android applications, so a file is dispatched to a nearby device without cables, pairing dialogs, or a mailbox involved.

Key capabilities

• Acts as an Android client for both the hosted PairDrop service at https://pairdrop.net/ and self-hosted Snapdrop installations.
• Integrates with the Android operating system so PairDrop can be selected as a share target directly from within other apps.
• Transfers files between Android, Windows, Linux, iPhone and Mac devices on the local network, using WebRTC.
• Ships as a signed release on both Google Play and F-Droid, with an APK Build GitHub Actions workflow producing CI builds from the master branch.
• Is localized through Crowdin, with translations managed centrally rather than edited by hand in the .xml resource files.
• Publishes a public uptime status page for the PairDrop service alongside a Codacy code-quality badge and a GitHub Issues tracker that currently carries 29 open issues.
• Accepts community contributions through issues and pull requests, with translations welcomed for languages that do not yet exist.

Who uses it and how

• Individual users who regularly move a single file between an Android phone and a desktop and want to avoid USB cables, Bluetooth pairing, or self-addressed emails.
• People who already use PairDrop in a browser and install the app because they use it often enough in daily life to benefit from native Android integration.
• Users sending files from inside other Android applications by selecting PairDrop as the system share destination.
• Operators running their own Snapdrop server who point the same client at their self-hosted instance instead of the public service.
• Contributors and translators working through the repository's issues, pull requests, and the Crowdin localization project.

Getting started

Install the app from Google Play at com.fmsys.snapdrop or from F-Droid; prebuilt APKs are also available from the GitHub Releases page, which the README's release badge links to.

How it compares

The README explicitly positions PairDrop as "a bit like Apple's Airdrop, but not only for Apple devices", extending the same idea of direct local sharing to a genuinely cross-platform set of systems rather than a single vendor's ecosystem. Against the alternatives it lists — USB, Bluetooth, and email — the differentiator is that files move over the local network through the PairDrop service with no cable, pairing step, or message.

When to use it — and when not

You need an Android device, and the transfer path depends on the PairDrop or Snapdrop service being reachable, so an outage of the hosted site affects you unless you operate a self-hosted server yourself; the project also maintains a public uptime page, which implies that dependency. This is not the place to report bugs in the PairDrop website itself, since problems occurring independently of the app are explicitly out of scope, and with 29 open issues open some rough edges remain; it is also a GPL-3.0 Java project, so contributors should be comfortable with that licence and codebase.