You're standing next to your laptop with a video on your phone, and somehow the easiest way to move it across is to email it to yourself, upload it to a cloud drive, or message it and wait. All of that bounces your file through the internet to send it two feet. LanLink is the app I built to fix that: it sends files directly between devices on the same network — no internet, no accounts, no size limits.
The problem with the obvious options
AirDrop solved this beautifully — if you live entirely inside Apple. The moment there's an Android phone and a Windows or Linux laptop in the room, you're back to cloud uploads, chat apps that recompress your photos, or hunting for a USB cable. That's slow, it costs data, and it needs a connection you might not have. The file is right there on the same Wi-Fi; it should just go straight across.
How local-network transfer works
LanLink keeps the idea simple:
- Discovery. Both devices announce themselves on the local network, so each one shows up as a tappable device on the other — no typing IP addresses, no QR codes for the common case.
- Direct transfer. You pick a device and the file streams straight to it over the LAN at full Wi-Fi speed. Nothing is uploaded to a server and nothing leaves your network.
- Any file, any size. Because there's no cloud middleman, there's no upload cap and no recompression — a 4K video arrives as the same 4K video.
The practical upshot: it works on a plane, in a building with no internet, or on a phone hotspot with no data — anywhere two devices can see each other on a network.
Built with Flutter, compatible with LocalSend
LanLink is written in Flutter and Dart, which is why one codebase ships to Android, iOS, Windows, macOS and Linux. That cross-platform reach is the whole point — the value of the app is precisely in the gaps AirDrop leaves.
It also speaks the LocalSend protocol, the open standard for local file sharing. That was a deliberate choice: rather than invent a closed protocol that only talks to itself, building on an open one means LanLink can interoperate with the wider ecosystem instead of locking you in. Open protocols age better than clever proprietary ones.
Why "no accounts" is a feature, not a shortcut
It would be easy to bolt on sign-in and a cloud relay. I deliberately didn't. No account means nothing to leak, no server to run, and no privacy story to explain — your files never touch infrastructure I control. For a tool whose job is "move this file across the room," the most respectful design is to get out of the way entirely.
Getting it on every platform
The latest piece of this was Linux. Flutter supports Linux desktop, so the latest version now builds a Linux release as well — packaged as a portable AppImage and a .tar.gz so it runs on essentially any distribution. That means the download page now covers Android, Windows, macOS and Linux from the same codebase. You can grab it on the LanLink download page.
The lesson
The best version of this tool is the one that does less: no login wall, no cloud, no settings to understand. Pick a device, send a file, done. Building on an open protocol and a cross-platform toolkit is what let a small app cover every device people actually own — which is the only thing that makes "just send it across the room" finally true.