Smartphones have become almost omnipotent, they can help you daily and instantly for many things. Obviously, they carry a good amount of storage capacity that can save you quickly when you don’t have a USB key with them.
But what if you don’t have your cable with you? What if you wanted to get rid of your cable at home to transfer certain files from one computer to another? All this is perfectly possible thanks to your smartphone.
Enough to easily bring an old phone back to life, which will then serve as a wireless external hard drive or even your phone will find another new use for it! To achieve this, simply follow our tutorial.
Prerequisites
- Be on the same Wi-Fi network between computer and phone
Note that the method we are going to explain to you works on both Windows and Mac computers. We will make a folder on your phone searchable by your computer, wirelessly using an app. No more editing than that and you definitely don’t need to be root for it to work.
However, keep in mind that the devices you want to connect to each other must be connected to the same WiFi network. Without it, they will not be able to communicate with each other wirelessly, so using this number will not be possible. So, remember to connect your computer and smartphone to the same WiFi network whenever you want to use your phone as a wireless external hard drive.
1 – Install Pocketshare app
To achieve this we will need to download an app. This is developed by Appcube and is not at risk: You don’t need to allow installation of unknown sources, it’s available directly on Play Store here:
Download and launch the Pocketshare app on your smartphone. To use it, simply accept that the app (naturally) accesses your storage.
When you come to the main page of the application, you will directly see the free space left on your phone, so it can be used directly by the application as an external hard drive. Feel free to make room if needed.
If you are using a Mac, you can skip directly to step 3. For Windows computer users, a little tweaking still needs to be done to allow your computer to use it.
2 – Configure your computer under Windows
automatic mode
Mac systems can automatically detect Pocketshare-created folder, which is not supposed to be on Windows. Therefore, the developer provides a small utility within the application to facilitate the setup of the server, allowing you to create a “.bat” file that will configure your computer itself.
To do this, go to the application settings by clicking on the gear icon in the upper right. Then select “Help” and scroll down until you reach the “Windows” section. At the bottom, select the letter your network hard drive will get and press “Save configuration”.
Once this is done, see the “Option 1” section: you are given an internet address. Type this in the search bar of your favorite web browser, not forgetting the “ftp://” in front of it. In our example it is therefore “ftp://192.168.1.1:8081”.
You can directly access the contents of your Pocketshare folder by typing the address provided in your search bar! So you can use this to transfer files from your phone to your PC wirelessly.
To go further, right-click on “pocket_windows.bat” and click on “Save as”. Put the file in any folder on your phone (here we put it in My Documents).
After downloading, right click and select “Run as administrator”. A warning message appears. Don’t worry: click “More info” and then click “Run anyway”.
A black window will appear and disappear very quickly: this is the process of setting up your network hard drive, this is perfectly normal. Restart your computer and voila: your phone will show up as Pocketshare in your documents!
manual mode
If that didn’t work, don’t worry: we have another solution for you. Select “This PC” in your file explorer. Right-click on an empty area and select “Add network location”.
A new window will open, click next. Select “Choose a custom network location”. In the network or internet address, enter the same address as we saw earlier (ftp://192.168.1.1:8081 in the example).
Click next, leave “login anonymously” checked and click next. Now you can give a name to the folder to be created. You are free to define it however you want, such as your phone model or a nickname. In the example we chose “my phone”. Click next.
And there you go! Now when Pocketshare is launched on your phone, you can use the storage memory wirelessly thanks to the newly created folder that appears directly in your file explorer!
3 – Transfer files wirelessly
Nothing could be easier to transfer files from your computer to your phone: simply drag any file from your computer into this new window or even copy a file from your computer and paste it into the Pocketshare folder.
For this to work, please make sure your phone does not go to sleep and the app is started. After the transfer is complete, you can find your file in the “Files” section of the reception, which you can open directly.
If you want to send it from your phone to your computer, it’s that easy! Indeed, Pocketshare works like any traditional mobile app: you just have to share.
Select the file you want to send and then choose Pocketshare. The app will notify you that the file is available in your shared folder. All you have to do is open your computer in Pocketshare folder and you will find it directly!
And there you go! Once everything is installed, there is nothing else to do: when you want to transfer your files directly from your computer to your phone, simply launch the Pocketshare app and vice versa! But never forget that for this to work you need to be connected to the same network on both devices otherwise nothing will work.
