Best AirDrop Alternatives for Windows in 2026

Why Windows Still Lacks a Real AirDrop Equivalent

I've been a Windows user since XP. My daily driver is a Windows 11 desktop (i7-13700K, RTX 5080, 48GB DDR5), and I do most of my development on it. But every time I take a photo on my iPhone 15 and need it on that PC, I hit the same wall Apple built years ago: AirDrop only talks to other Apple devices.

Microsoft's answer is "Phone Link" and Nearby Share, both of which have serious limitations I'll cover below. Most comparison articles I found ranking for "airdrop alternative windows" just list eight tools with their marketing bullet points and call it a day. They don't tell you that Snapdrop silently fails on files over 1GB, or that LocalSend's discovery breaks on dual-NIC machines, or that Nearby Share still won't talk to an iPhone. Those are the things that matter when you're actually standing there with a file to move.

This post walks through setting up each tool step by step, including the problems you'll hit that the official docs skip.

What I Actually Tested and How

I tested five tools over the past two weeks across three scenarios:

1. LAN transfer (Windows desktop and iPhone 15 on the same Wi-Fi)
2. Cross-network transfer (iPhone on cellular in Greenville, SC to my Windows desktop on home Wi-Fi)
3. Large file transfer (a 4.2GB video file, because anything under 100MB is easy)

The tools: OpenDrop, LocalSend, Snapdrop/Pairdrop, Windows Nearby Share, and Send Anywhere. I also briefly tested LANDrop and Sharedrop but neither lasted long enough in testing to warrant a full section (LANDrop hasn't been updated since 2023; Sharedrop failed to connect on three separate attempts).

Every speed number below is from my actual network. Your results will vary depending on your router, interference, and device hardware.

Tool-by-Tool Setup and Gotchas

1. OpenDrop (Full Disclosure: This Is Ours)

I built OpenDrop because I was tired of emailing photos to myself or uploading them through Discord just to get them from my iPhone to my PC. I didn't trust random transfer apps with my files, so I wrote my own. It runs on Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, and iOS.

Setup on Windows:

1. Download from the Microsoft Store (search "OpenDrop") or grab the direct installer at www.nfdgames.com/OpenDrop.
2. Launch OpenDrop. It starts a local server on port 8000 and broadcasts via mDNS (_opendrop._tcp.local.) so other devices can find it automatically.
3. On your iPhone or Android device, install OpenDrop from the App Store or Google Play.
4. If both devices are on the same network, the mobile app discovers your PC within a few seconds. Tap the device name, pick your files, send.
5. If mDNS is blocked (common on hotel and corporate Wi-Fi), tap the QR icon on the desktop app and scan it from your phone. The QR encodes the server's IP and port directly, bypassing discovery entirely.

Received files land in ~/Downloads/OpenDrop/Files on Windows. You can change this in settings, but that's the default.

Gotcha you won't find in docs: Windows Defender's firewall will sometimes block the mDNS broadcast on port 5353 UDP. If your phone isn't discovering the PC, open Windows Security > Firewall > Allow an app through firewall, and make sure OpenDrop is allowed on Private networks. We added QR pairing specifically because three users emailed us in the same week about hotel Wi-Fi blocking multicast.

2. LocalSend

LocalSend is open-source and works on the same mDNS-based local discovery principle. It's a solid tool.

Setup:

1. Download from localsend.org or the Microsoft Store.
2. Install and open it. It assigns you a random name like "Brave Falcon."
3. Install LocalSend on your phone (iOS or Android).
4. Both devices on the same network should see each other. Select files, tap the target device, confirm on the receiving end.

What the docs don't tell you: If your Windows machine has both Ethernet and Wi-Fi active (common for desktops), LocalSend sometimes advertises the wrong IP. Your phone tries to connect to the Ethernet IP that isn't routable from Wi-Fi, and the transfer just silently hangs. The fix is to disable the network adapter you aren't using for the transfer, but that's annoying. I hit this on my desktop, which has both a 2.5Gb Ethernet port and Wi-Fi connected simultaneously.

LocalSend is LAN-only. If your devices aren't on the same network, it can't help you. No remote transfer option exists.

3. Snapdrop / PairDrop

Snapdrop was the original browser-based AirDrop clone. The original is mostly dead; PairDrop is the actively maintained fork.

Setup:

1. Open pairdrop.net in a browser on your PC.
2. Open pairdrop.net in a browser on your phone.
3. Both devices appear as icons. Click/tap the target, pick a file.

That's it. No install needed. The simplicity is really the appeal here.

The catch: PairDrop uses WebRTC for peer-to-peer transfer when both devices are on the same network, but it falls back to a TURN server when they aren't. The TURN fallback is slow and has file size issues. I tried sending a 1.5GB video through PairDrop and the browser tab crashed on my iPhone in Safari. On files under 200MB, it works fine. The lack of a native app also means you can't receive files in the background on mobile; switch away from the browser tab and the transfer may die.

4. Windows Nearby Share (built-in)

Microsoft's built-in option. Go to Settings > System > Nearby sharing, and turn it on.

Setup:

1. On both Windows PCs, go to Settings > System > Nearby sharing.
2. Set it to "Everyone nearby" or "My devices only."
3. Right-click any file in File Explorer, click Share, and pick the target PC.

I'm saying "both Windows PCs" because that's the limitation. Nearby Share only works between Windows machines. It uses Bluetooth for discovery and Wi-Fi Direct for the actual transfer. No iPhone support. No Android support (Google's "Nearby Share," now called Quick Share, is a different protocol entirely). If you need to move a file from an iPhone to a Windows PC, this option doesn't exist for you.

Performance quirk: Nearby Share uses Bluetooth Low Energy for the initial handshake, and I've seen it take 30+ seconds to discover a machine sitting three feet away. Once connected, speeds are decent over Wi-Fi Direct, but the discovery process feels archaic compared to mDNS-based tools.

5. Send Anywhere

Send Anywhere gives you a 6-digit code. Enter it on the other device, file transfers.

Setup:

1. Install Send Anywhere on both devices (available on basically every platform).
2. Select a file on the sending device. You get a 6-digit key and a QR code.
3. Enter the key or scan the QR on the receiving device.

It works across networks, which is a plus. The 6-digit code is simple enough that you can even tell someone over the phone. But there's a cost: files route through their cloud servers. For the free tier, you'll see ads on mobile. And there's a 10GB file size limit on free accounts with slower speeds because everything goes through their relay infrastructure.

My bigger concern is privacy. Your files pass through Send Anywhere's servers. They say they don't store them, but you're trusting a third party with your data. With OpenDrop on LAN, traffic never leaves your local network. The file goes straight from device to device over HTTP on port 8000.

Real Speed Results on My Network

I transferred the same 850MB folder of photos from my iPhone 15 to my Windows 11 desktop over my home Wi-Fi. All devices were on the same 5GHz network, about 10 feet from the router. These numbers are specific to my setup and will vary on yours:

• OpenDrop (LAN): Finished in roughly 35 seconds. Files streamed directly with no chunking. Received into %USERPROFILE%\Downloads\OpenDrop\Files.
• LocalSend: About 40 seconds once it connected. Discovery took an extra 5-8 seconds.
• PairDrop: Around 55 seconds. WebRTC adds overhead, and the browser isn't as efficient as a native app for sustained transfers.
• Send Anywhere: Roughly 70 seconds. Traffic routed through their servers even though both devices were on the same network (there's a "direct" option but it didn't kick in automatically).
• Windows Nearby Share: Not applicable since my iPhone can't use it.

For the remote test (iPhone on cellular to PC on home Wi-Fi), only OpenDrop and Send Anywhere could do it without extra configuration. OpenDrop's free tier managed the 850MB folder in about 15 minutes via the Cloudflare tunnel. Send Anywhere took about 12 minutes. OpenDrop Pro would cut that much with its dedicated Fly.io relay, though I'll admit I haven't benchmarked Pro on cellular recently enough to give a precise number.

Cross-Platform Support: Where Most Tools Fall Apart

Here's the thing most comparison articles gloss over. They'll list platform support as checkmarks in a table, but they won't tell you about the quality of each platform's experience.

LocalSend has iOS and Android apps, and they work, but the iOS app sometimes loses discovery when the phone's screen locks. You have to keep the screen on during the entire transfer. PairDrop technically works everywhere a browser runs, but "works" and "works well" are different things. Try PairDrop in Safari on iOS and you'll see what I mean: no background transfers, the page refreshes if you switch apps, and large files crash the tab.

Windows Nearby Share is Windows-to-Windows only. Google Quick Share works between Android and Windows (or ChromeOS), but iPhones are excluded. Apple's AirDrop is Apple-to-Apple only.

I built OpenDrop to cover every combination. Our mobile apps are Flutter-based so the iOS and Android experiences are consistent. The desktop app has both a GUI and a CLI (the CLI is handy for scripting batch transfers on Linux). I regularly test with my M5 MacBook Pro, my ParrotOS laptop, my Windows desktop, my iPhone 15, and a budget Redbeat D5 Android phone. Every platform combination works. That's the whole point.

Which One Should You Actually Use?

This depends on what you're transferring and where your devices are.

If you just need to move one small file between two devices on the same Wi-Fi, PairDrop in a browser is the fastest path to zero-install transfer. Open the site, send, done. For anything over a few hundred megabytes, or if you do this regularly, a native app is better.

If all your devices are Apple + Windows and always on the same network, LocalSend is a reasonable open-source option. Just be aware of the dual-NIC gotcha I mentioned and the LAN-only limitation.

If you need to transfer files between any combination of devices, across any network, with no file size surprises, that's the problem I built OpenDrop to solve. LAN transfers stream directly up to 10GB per file with no chunking. Remote transfers work automatically even when your devices are on different networks. The free tier handles remote via Cloudflare tunnels, and Pro gives you a dedicated relay that's 4-6x faster. Either way, your files never sit on someone else's cloud storage. On LAN, they don't even leave your local network.

I'm biased, obviously. But I'm also the person who tested all five of these tools on real hardware, hit real bugs, and chose to keep building OpenDrop because the alternatives kept letting me down in one way or another. The dual-NIC issue with LocalSend, the tab-crash issue with PairDrop, the ads in Send Anywhere, the Apple/Windows-only silos. I wanted one tool that just worked across everything, and when I couldn't find it, we built it.