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KDE Connect: Enabling communication between all your devices

(community.kde.org)
475 points snthd | 9 comments | 12 Oct 25 12:04 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source | bottom
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sombragris ◴[13 Oct 25 19:11 UTC] No.45572177[source]▶
At least in my use case (as link between Android devices and both Linux/Win PCs) KDE Connect is a real killer app. It enabled seamless integration and saved me lots of hassle and time. It really should get more exposure.

I see reports that it doesn't work. These are mostly for distros where Plasma is either rather old or taking a backseat after other environment (usually Gnome). I'm having great results with the latest Plasma 6 on Slackware-current and also in a standard Windows 11 environment.

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1. gear54rus ◴[21 Oct 25 13:42 UTC] No.45655713[source]▶
I definitely have a need for this, but I can't stomach same-network requirement.

Maybe they need self-hostable coordination server so that devices can connect to each other through it.

For now it's still 'send to telegram saved messages' for me.

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2. exdeejay_ ◴[21 Oct 25 15:08 UTC] No.45656765[source]▶
Have you considered using Tailscale to get around the same-network requirement?
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3. ezst ◴[21 Oct 25 15:54 UTC] No.45657330[source]▶
> self-hostable coordination server

What a long way to spell VPN :-) (been using it for a decade or so through wireguard)

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4. gear54rus ◴[21 Oct 25 17:49 UTC] No.45659054[source]▶
No, vpn takes over your network and you have to fight weird issues on different platforms. This seems like a square peg for a round hole.
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5. gear54rus ◴[21 Oct 25 17:50 UTC] No.45659067[source]▶
I am a heavy user of it. I don't want to stay connected to it 24/7.
6. ezst ◴[21 Oct 25 18:36 UTC] No.45659760{3}[source]▶
Not really? I mean, it's easy to set and forget which subnets get tunnelled with wireguard (and others, it's just that wg forces you to be explicit about it)
7. jeroenhd ◴[21 Oct 25 18:48 UTC] No.45659923{3}[source]▶
Wireguard is purely point-to-point. You have to manually specify any configuration involving routing more than just the local IP addresses you add.

Not sure if it's the best solution, but there's no reason to take over your entire network.

Even with my old OpenVPN setup I had a config where only my local 10.2.0.0/16 got routed over the VPN, everything else went straight to the outside world. Set up IPv6 ULA and you don't need to worry about IP addressing conflicts.

8. forbiddenlake ◴[21 Oct 25 18:50 UTC] No.45659958[source]▶
Tailscale doesn't support mDNS / multicast at all, making working with KDE Connect more nebulous. I attempted to add a static peer via the Tailscale hostname, but both ends report not reachable, and the Tailscale daemon is constantly dropping multicast packets. So I'm not sure how this helps, but I also don't have a use case - if I'm on my laptop, my phone is on the same Wifi network 99% of the time.
9. foresto ◴[22 Oct 25 04:31 UTC] No.45664900[source]▶
> I can't stomach same-network requirement.

The Android app let me add a peer by IP address. Once I opened traffic on the right port, it crossed a network boundary just fine.

My case was an adjacent network, but I don't see any reason why it wouldn't work across more hops.