KDE connect application of the K Desktop Environment suite of applications is one of the must-have applications which you should have on your Phone as well as your PC. It contains a ton of feature which you don’t even know you need right now. Once you start using it, there is no going back.
In this tutorial, we will take at most if not all the features of KDE Connect and look at the installation process of this application.
What is KDE connect about?
The application is cross-platform, as in available on Windows, macOS as well as Android. Thus, this allows all the devices to connect over a Wi-Fi network and interact with each other. The notable features include –
- You can use your Phone as a touchpad for PC/Laptop.
- You can receive your notifications from the phone on your computer.
- If you are presenting any document, then you can control the presentation from your phone.
- You can also reply to the message from the notifications.
- If you’re playing any media on your PC, then you can control tracks, volume, shuffle and many other settings from the phone, this feature goes both ways.
- You can execute preset commands from the android device as well.
- If you’ve kept your phone somewhere, and you can’t find it, then you can make it ring using your PC.
- And of course, you can share files from one device to another using KDE Connect as well.
Installing KDE Connect
To use it, we will first have to install the application on both android and Windows/macOS/Linux. On Android it is really simple as it is available in the Google Play Store as well as on the F-Droid store.
On Linux distributions, the application is available in every official repository, so you can install it directly from your Software centre. To install it directly from your command line, you can type the following command, depending upon your Linux distribution :
# On Ubuntu and Debian based distributions
sudo apt update && sudo apt install kdeconnect
# On Fedora Workstation
sudo dnf install kde-connect
# On Arch Linux and Arch-based distributions
sudo pacman -S kdeconnect
Finish setting up
You have to pair both the devices now, and after that you will have to give the android app several permissions such as Call log, contacts, SMS, and accessibility if you want to access those features from your PC.
Don’t worry, the connection is encrypted and all the applications are open-source, so nobody will snoop on your private information.
You can also give various permissions to the android device from the desktop application, so that it can access contents and settings on your PC.
Summary
With this application, the possibilities are endless. I loved the feature of remotely executing commands over LAN connection, so you can shut down your PC if you are away from your PC and you don’t have to go all the way back to your room.
References
KDE Connect Community Wiki page