KDE Connect

Jason · December 30, 2019, 01:51:51 PM

I recently started using KDE Connect again. KDE Connect is a program that allows you to connect to your phone and also sync certain activities. You install it in Plasma (should work with other DEs, too) and on your phone. An example of the syncing activity is that when I'm watching a YouTube video it shows up on my phone with a pause button (or play if already paused). So it's like a remote control.

There are also other handy plugins built-in, at least in Kubuntu, that let you ring your phone, control the pointer on the computer with your phone, act as a slideshow remote, send files, and a few others. On feature I like that I can see using is a shared clipboard. There have been times I've had really long URLs on my phone or my computer and didn't want to have to type it in on the other. I could email the link but this is handier.

The main reason I got it was so that I could send/receive texts on my computer. It's so much easier typing a text on a computer than on a phone screen. I wasn't sure this was working until a friend send me a text today. I was able to reply to it on my computer with no problems. The messages I send on my computer also show up on my phone.

For those using other OSes, you should be able to still install KDE Connect as long as you can access KDE libraries but Gnome has its own version, I believe - GS Connect. I don't know if it has the same features but I would expect so.

Update: Forgot to post about shared clipboard feature. It's posted above now.

fox · December 30, 2019, 03:35:59 PM

I also send texts from my computer, but I do it with an application called MightyText. You put this on your phone and you go to the MightText site from your browser and sign in. All my phone texts show up on my computer. The nice thing for me about MightText is that it works from any operating system. I am beta-testing their app on my iPad and it works well.

Jason · December 30, 2019, 04:25:03 PM

Cool to know, but note that KDE Connect does a lot more than just texts and it's Open Source. You also don't have to login into any website. Are the texts for MightyText stored on their servers? I wouldn't like that personally. I know it's not necessarily a huge deal - who but young people actually talk about anything personal via texting?

I didn't know this until I just looked now but it looks KDE Connect is also cross-platform. Besides Linux and Android, it's also available for Windows and macOS although the latter isn't an official release and requires a bit of work - you have to build it. They say that they began development on an app for iOS in 2014 but it doesn't look there will be one anytime soon.

Also noticed browser integration - in their case, it means you can send browser tabs to your phone along with the remote control of YouTube and Netflix.

fox · December 30, 2019, 05:50:14 PM

I can't speak to KDEconnect, but I have had GSconnect installed in Ubuntu 19.10 on my iMac, and it doesn't see my phone. I'm unwilling to put on KDEconnect because I don't want all those KDE libraries. MightyText is very reliable and while not open source, the basic version is free.

Jason · December 30, 2019, 05:53:00 PM

Quote from: fox on December 30, 2019, 05:50:14 PM
I can't speak to KDEconnect, but I have had GSconnect installed in Ubuntu 19.10 on my iMac, and it doesn't see my phone. I'm unwilling to put on KDEconnect because I don't want all those KDE libraries. MightyText is very reliable and while not open source, the basic version is free.

Did you pair it with your phone? And install, I assume, the app for it on the phone? I had to get KDE Connect through the FDroid store.

ssfc72 · January 17, 2020, 11:46:29 AM

I couldn't get the ClipSync program to work on my LG phone and Mint distro. It installed ok but would not copy my clipboard between the computer and phone. This is a quite old program and it did work nicely for me a few years ago. Perhaps it no longer works with the recent versions of Android and Mint.

So, I tried KDE Connect. It installed ok on my LG phone and my Mint 19 desktop. I had a great bit of difficulty on trying to figure how to get the two devices connected to each other.
After getting the devices to finally connect to each other I then again had great difficulty in copying the clipboard/copy action from one device to another. I would select the text in one device and then go to the other device and open a txt document and try to do a paste but the paste function was greyed out and would not work.

After a lot of fiddling around with settings, I finally got the text to be copied from one device to another. I hope I can remember where in the program I went to copy text from one device to another. It certainly wasn't intuitive for me.

Clipsync was much easier to setup and use. Too bad the old program no longer seems to work on the latest Android and Mint distro.

Jason · January 17, 2020, 07:48:16 PM

Thanks for sharing your experience, Bill. I'm not sure why you had so much trouble doing copy/paste from one device to another. Once they're connecting, you should just have to just copy the text on one device and then paste on the other, but perhaps the following paragraph explains why you had trouble. Perhaps you could explain more what your issue was. Was it an issue copying from the phone to the desktop? Was it copying or paste not working? And on which device? Do you use the long press to copy/paste text on the phone/tablet?

The other issue, which really isn't KDE Connects fault, is that it only sometimes works over my VPN client. VPN connects you to another network, so unless your devices happen to be connected to exactly the same network and sharing is allowed on that network, any network services that would otherwise work aren't going to work.

And it's not just location - when both devices are connected to one location, say Toronto, there are multiple VPN servers, so you still may not be on the same network. And not all servers allow network sharing.

The one thing I can't figure out if it's even possible is how to be the original sender for texts from my desktop. I can receive texts and respond to them on my computer but can't open up a text there to send without having received one first. In other words, I can only respond to texts, not send them. It'd be nice if they'd add this feature.

ssfc72 · January 19, 2020, 03:20:00 AM

Thanks for the info Jason. I will have to do some Google searching about how KDE Connect is supposed to work.

I know there was a menu on the phone, within the KDE App, that listed a whole page of services/features that where check marked to be turned on. One of the features was for the Clipboard to be active and it was either already selected or I had to checkmark it on.

However the copy/paste method of selecting text and then pasting the text on the other device does not work for me. As I said in my last post, the paste function was greyed out in the menu that comes up, when trying to paste the text. I found I had to go to some Menu where you could choose Send (or something like that) and then the text could be pasted onto the other device.

Jason · January 19, 2020, 03:55:26 AM

Quote from: ssfc72 on January 19, 2020, 03:20:00 AM
However the copy/paste method of selecting text and then pasting the text on the other device does not work for me. As I said in my last post, the paste function was greyed out in the menu that comes up, when trying to paste the text. I found I had to go to some Menu where you could choose Send (or something like that) and then the text could be pasted onto the other device.

Hmm, I didn't have that experience.

Are you saying the paste option was greyed out on the desktop? That's why I was asking from which device to which device you were doing the copy to. And do you have a problem doing the inverse?

Also note that the clipboard function has to be enabled in KDE Connect on both devices.

I'm also wondering if perhaps you're not using Plasma and it doesn't work as well outside of the Plasma desktop.

ssfc72 · January 19, 2020, 09:23:29 AM

Ok I finally got copy/paste to work between the phone and the computer.

I made some changes both on the computer and phone for the KDE Connect settings.

On the phone I turned on some other settings in the Plugin menu. One of the settings was for access to files.
On the computer I believe I had to again select the LG phone as the connected device. I had done that already, the other day, but maybe I will have to do it each time I go to use KDE Connect on the computer??

Edit - I am not running a vpn because i am just using KDE Connect, at home.

Jason · January 19, 2020, 03:33:34 PM

Quote from: ssfc72 on January 19, 2020, 09:23:29 AM
On the computer I believe I had to again select the LG phone as the connected device. I had done that already, the other day, but maybe I will have to do it each time I go to use KDE Connect on the computer??

No, you shouldn't have to. It should automatically connect when it sees that the device is available. Sometimes it takes a few seconds longer than you'd expect for this to happen. At least that's how it works for me in Plasma. You may have to set KDE Connect to automatically start up when OS starts if it doesn't do it automatically.

Good work getting it working!