Android and macOS were never designed to talk to each other. AirDrop only works between Apple devices, and Quick Share only works between Android, ChromeOS and Windows. So one of the most common pairings in a household — an Android phone and a MacBook — is the one with no built-in way to pass a file across.
It used to be possible to work around that with a USB cable or with Bluetooth. When I tried to get my own photos onto my MacBook, I found that Apple has closed both of those routes, and that what is left is more of a hassle than it should be. That is why LocalShare exists. This guide goes through each route in turn.
What no longer works: the USB cable
Plugging the phone into the Mac looks like the obvious answer, and on Windows it is: the phone shows up as a drive and you copy the photos across. On a Mac that is no longer possible. Apple's policy is that macOS does not give you access to the memory of an Android phone as a USB storage volume, so the phone never appears in Finder. It charges, and that is all.
This is a decision on the Mac side, not a fault in the phone or the cable, so a different cable or a different Android phone makes no difference.
What no longer works: Bluetooth
Bluetooth file transfer was the other fallback: pair the phone with the Mac, then send a photo from the Android share menu. It was always slow — several seconds per photo — but it needed no network and no extra software. Apple has decided that file transfers over Bluetooth are no longer possible either. The two devices will still pair, but you cannot send a file across.
What works, with more hassle than it should take
That leaves sending the files out to the internet and fetching them back again, even though the two devices are lying next to each other.
- Email to yourself. Fine for two or three photos. Most providers stop at around 25 MB per message, which is a handful of pictures or a few seconds of video, and many mail apps shrink photos before sending unless you tell them not to.
- Google Drive. Upload on the phone, wait, open Drive on the Mac, download, and then remember to delete the copy in Drive so it does not eat into your storage.
- Google Photos. Wait for the backup to finish on the phone, open the website on the Mac, select the photos and download them as a zip file that you then have to unpack. If the account is set to "Storage saver" rather than "Original quality", what you get back has been re-compressed.
All three need an account, and all three make every file take two trips: up to a data centre and back down. Home upload speeds are usually a fraction of download speeds, so a 2 GB video that could cross your Wi-Fi in a minute or two can take half an hour to upload first.
These are still the right choice when the Mac is somewhere else, or when you want the files in the cloud anyway.
What works without the detour: over Wi-Fi, in the browser
Both devices are already on the same Wi-Fi network, and both have a browser. That is all LocalShare needs.
- On the Mac, open www.local-share.com in Safari, Chrome or Firefox.
- On the phone, open the same address in Chrome. The counter at the top of the page should now say two devices are connected.
- On the phone, tap Share Files. Android's file picker opens; switch to the Photos or Gallery view if you want pictures, and select as many as you like.
- On the Mac, the files show up under "Shared by Others". Tick "Select All" and click Download. They land in your Downloads folder.
The photos go straight from the phone to the Mac across your own router, at original resolution and with their metadata intact. Nothing is uploaded, and there is no account or app involved.
Keep the phone's screen on and the browser in the foreground until the progress bars finish. Android pauses pages in the background to save battery, and the phone is where the data is coming from. For a very large batch — an entire camera roll — send it in a few portions rather than all at once, so that an interrupted transfer does not mean starting over.
Which one to pick
- Both devices on the same Wi-Fi: the browser route. Nothing to install, full quality, no upload.
- The Mac is somewhere else: Google Drive or Google Photos, with the upload quality checked first.
- Two or three small photos: email will do.
- USB cable or Bluetooth: no longer an option between Android and macOS.
If the two devices do not see each other
The usual reasons are that the phone has quietly dropped to mobile data, that one device is on a guest network, or that a VPN is switched on. The guide on devices that cannot find each other walks through each of these.
Open LocalShare