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KDE Connect: Enabling communication between all your devices

(community.kde.org)
475 points snthd | 2 comments | 12 Oct 25 12:04 UTC | HN request time: 0.416s | source
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karmakaze ◴[12 Oct 25 17:09 UTC] No.45559827[source]▶
I was wondering what "the network" here means:

> To achieve this, KDE Connect:

    implements a secure communication protocol over the network, and allows any developer to create plugins on top of it.
    Has a component that you install on your desktop.
    Has a KDE Connect client app you run on your phone.
Looking further it is only for the local network (with ways to extend it e.g. VPNs).
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creatonez ◴[13 Oct 25 01:56 UTC] No.45563974[source]▶
It has bluetooth support now as well
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m463 ◴[13 Oct 25 22:08 UTC] No.45573849[source]▶
it also talks about using a VPN and what ports to open in a firewall.

I don't know how it handles the harder part, the "device on internet" talks to "device in my house"

most phones and apps use this "harder part" to interpose their corporate server for more than TURN/STUN and continue to "collect all the data" or "insert a subscription"

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Oxodao ◴[14 Oct 25 10:00 UTC] No.45578146[source]▶
Did you get this to work with wireguard though?

As long as my phone is connected to wireguard KDEConnect does NOT see any other computer, apparently because it wont forward ICMP broadcast according to the internet.

I would really like to have a solution to this issue but since its baked in WG i don't think this is possible

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1. m463 ◴[14 Oct 25 18:57 UTC] No.45583491[source]▶
Actually, I mean the whole "find and talk to my home server over the internet"

Generally it does this by having a DNS record for your home server, or having some other well-known server give out its address or relay the packets.

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2. jeroenhd ◴[21 Oct 25 11:11 UTC] No.45654489[source]▶
KDE Connect leverages mDNS on the network (non-Bluetooth) side, which relies on broadcasts. That means it'll break across networks without a VPN of some kind. For some VPNs (Wireguard, OpenVPN in TUN mode) that also means connectivity is impossible.

You can, if you want, open ports and configure KDE connect to reach out across the internet (practically only feasible with one device behind your router on IPv4, any on IPv6), but because it doesn't use "real" DNS, you can't just enter a DDNS hostname, you have to specify the full IP address.