Easily Share Files Between your Mobile Phones and Computers

Your digital data – like files, photos, documents, music, ebooks and videos – are spread across devices. If you're trying to share files between your computers and your mobile devices, you can save a lot of time if you follow the tips below.

The guide explains how you can easily and quickly exchange files and other data between your computers, mobile phones and tablets: E-mail Files The popular and most obvious solution for sharing files across devices is email. Send a file to yourself from one device and then download that email attachment on the other device. Usually, there are file size threshold limits on most e-mail servers. It can also be incredibly time consuming to e-mail big files back and forth, so keep that in mind. You can use e-mail to share files, but it only works best for the smaller ones. Use an External Drive for File Sharing A lot of people look at external hard drives as safe places to keep their data in case their computer crashes, but external drives can also be used to share files between computers within your home network. This way, you can keep everything in one central location, so that you don’t have to burden your computer or mobile devices with huge data files. Share Files in the Cloud You may use file storage services like Dropbox, Google Drive or SkyDrive to transfer files from one device to another via the cloud. Whether you use Dropbox, Google Drive, SkyDrive, or another cloud storage service, you can drop the file into the cloud storage folder on your computer and open the associated app on your phone. This will give you access to the file without having to transfer it to your phone manually or take up any of your phone’s internal storage. Then there are web-based apps to help you move files between your computers and phones. There’s ge.tt where you can upload files from the browser and download them on any other device. JustBeamIt is another web-based file transfer service where there are no limits as the file content is streamed directly from the source to the destination and not stored on third-party servers. Google Keep - You can write, or paste, text inside Google Keep and it instantly becomes available on all the other devices. Google Keep is web-based but they also have an Android app.

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Hopper and MoPad are other good web-based alternatives that can again be used for sending links and text snippets across devices.

AirDroid is one of the most convenient. Install the AirDroid app and you’ll be able to access your phone from a web browser, giving you the ability to copy files back and forth. You can also set up Windows networking or create an FTP server to allow your phone to access your PC’s storage.

SuperBeam is another useful app for transferring files between Android devices. Select file(s) inside any file manager app and choose SuperBeam from the Android sharing menu. It will generate a QR code that you can scan with SuperBeam on your other device and the file transfer will happen automatically. If the two Android devices are not connected to the same Wi-Fi network, SuperBeam will transfer files using Wi-Fi Direct mode.

Mac OS users can consider installing Droid NAS, an app that will make your Android phone /tablet appear in Finder and you can then easily browse or transfer files over Wi-Fi.

Apple does not provide access to the iOS file system except for the media gallery. You can use the excellent Documents app to transfer documents, photos and other files from the computer to your iPad and iPhone over the Wi-Fi network. The Documents app can be mounted as a network drive on your computer and files can be moved across iOS devices via drag-n-drop. The app also has a built-in browser to help you download and store web files including file types that aren’t supported by the default Safari browser.

iOS doesn’t support Bluetooth based file transfer so if you are to transfer photos or videos from the camera roll of your iPhone to an iPad, Dropbox is probably a good choice. For single files, web apps like ge.tt and DropCanvas.com are perfect for the job.

Mobile apps like Bump and Hoccer that let you exchange files between Android and iOS devices, or between your computer and your mobile device, with simple gestures. In the case of Bump, select a file on your mobile phone, tap the space bar of your computer with the phone and the file will instantly become available in the computer’s browser. For Hoccer, you can place your two phones side by side and drag a picture from one phone to another.

No matter which method you use to share files, you can save a lot of time if you're trying to share files between your computers and your mobile devices.

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