Air Gap Transfer vs LightDrop

Air Gap Transfer moves a file from one phone to another using nothing but the screen and the camera. One device turns your file into a moving pattern of codes. The other points its camera at that screen and rebuilds the file as it watches. No Wi-Fi, no Bluetooth, no cable, no cloud, no account, and no pairing. WHY Sometimes the network is the problem. You are on a locked-down guest Wi-Fi. AirDrop is disabled by policy. The other phone is on a different platform. The machine you are working with is deliberately kept off every network. Or you simply do not want a copy of your file passing through somebody else's server. Air Gap Transfer needs none of that infrastructure. If the two devices can see each other, they can talk. BUILT TO SURVIVE A SHAKY HAND Holding a phone perfectly still for a minute is not realistic, so the app does not ask you to. The file is spread across the stream with error correction, and the receiver keeps whatever it catches. Miss a fifth of the frames to blur, a passing hand or a glance away, and the transfer still completes. Nothing has to be sent twice and nothing has to be restarted. Every recovered file is checked against four separate checksums before it is offered to you. If it does not match exactly, you are told, rather than handed a quietly corrupted file. NOTHING LEAVES YOUR DEVICE There is no server to leave it to. The app has no networking code at all. Your files are read, encoded and displayed entirely on your own phone. The camera sees frames, decodes them in memory and discards them; nothing is recorded. HONEST ABOUT SPEED This is light travelling between two screens, not a network. Expect a small document or photo rather than a video library — files are capped at 32 MB, and a megabyte takes around a minute. For anything that fits, it works anywhere, including places nothing else does. A companion web version lets a laptop act as either end.

LightDrop transfers files by QR between two devices running LightDrop. One screen displays QR frames and the other device’s camera reads them. File transfer needs no shared network, Bluetooth, cable or app account. WHEN YOU NEED IT • An air-gapped or locked-down machine that will never join your network. • A work computer where USB ports are disabled and cloud drives are blocked. • Guest Wi-Fi that isolates every client, or a hotel network you would rather not trust. • A second screen nearby when email, cloud drives, and cables are not an option. • Anywhere a file has to cross an air gap and email is not an option. HOW IT WORKS • Pick text or a file on the sending device. LightDrop turns it into an animated QR stream. • Point the receiving device's camera at that screen. Fragments land continuously and the progress grid fills in. • Fountain coding means order does not matter and a dropped frame never restarts the transfer — keep the camera pointed and it completes. TURBO TRANSFER (PRO) • A binary QR fountain carries file bytes directly, without text encoding. • Adjustable playback up to 30 frames per second. Actual speed depends on the screen and camera. • LightDrop to LightDrop. Standard mode stays on as a compatible fallback, and the receiver recognises both automatically with nothing to configure. PASSWORD ENCRYPTION (PRO) • Encrypt the payload with a password before it ever reaches the screen. • Use a strong password and share it separately; it is not included in the QR stream. • Standard AES-GCM. Nothing leaves your device to make it work. IMAGES, HANDLED • Selected files are transferred as their original bytes, without automatic photo recompression. • Preview received images. Save to Photos on iPhone and iPad, or save a file on Mac. • Images are detected by file content, not by file extension. LIGHTDROP PRO Sending and receiving require LightDrop Pro, available as an in-app purchase. GOOD TO KNOW • Transfer speed depends on the sending screen's size and brightness, the receiving camera, and how steady you hold the device. Keep both screens clean and reasonably close. • Large files take real time. LightDrop estimates the duration before you start, so the decision is yours. — Privacy Policy: https://yangworks.dev/lightdrop/privacy Terms of Use: https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/