Submitted 2 weeks ago by Postmortal_Pop@lemmy.world to selfhosted@lemmy.world
Hey gang, do you have any suggestions for moving data from my phone to my jellyfin server? I tried using the daemon tools on F-Droid and could not for the life of me figure them out.
If you can use Termux, you can use the command-line lftp; I use this on Linux, so I’m familiar with it.
$ pkg install lftp $ lftp sftp://foo
Total Commander for Android has an SFTP plugin. They run their own fdroid repo.
rclone or rsync on ternux maybe, or totalcmd if you want gui file manager thing
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I’ve seen in this thread:
| Fewer Letters | More Letters |
|---|---|
| SCP | Secure Copy encrypted file transfer tool, authenticates and transfers over SSH |
| SFTP | Secure File Transfer Protocol for encrypted file transfer, over SSH |
| SSH | Secure Shell for remote terminal access |
[Thread #149 for this comm, first seen 9th Mar 2026, 05:30] [FAQ] [Full list] [Contact] [Source code]
f-droid.org/packages/lu.knaff.alain.saf_sftp
This lets you use the system files app with an sftp server. I thought the setup workflow was decent and it’s been stable for me
Owl files if you want a nice simple gui, but cli like termux or terminus are better for mass file transfer
FX File Manager still has the best ui in my opinion and supports a range of network access methods
I’ve used Ghost Commander for this; I’ve tried several and disliked it the least. That said, really wind up doing SCP over command line with termux.
I got into this issue recently, and the ones on F droid are bad like you say. So after trying many I ended up using 2 apps. If you want an open sources app, then good old Ghost Commander works very good. It has very good transfer rate and stability. The downside is the old interface, although some people might like it, and that it cannot keep the connection on the background. So if you lock your phone or close the app, the transfer will stop. The second one is not open source, but it works really well. It’s CX File Explorer. It has a fast transfer and can keep working in the background. All the other file managers that I tried had connectivity issues and would not complete the transfer on big files.
I just saw this on F-Droid, will need to test it, but sounds like it could be really good: f-droid.org/packages/lu.knaff.alain.saf_sftp
I’m hoping, it works like mounting or FUSE on proper Linux, where you can just use normal applications to transparently access network files. Then you’d be able to use any old file manager app to actually work with the files…
I don’t know of any sftp programs specifically, but any file sync program should work.
It would be massive overkill for this one task, but I personally use my Nextcloud server to move files on and off my iPhone to my services as needed. I have the Jellyfin media directory, Calibre upload, and Paperless upload directories mounted in Nextcloud as external directories (as SFTP mounts, I think) and then access them from my phone from the Nextcloud app.
Does it have to be SFTP?
I use both Syncthing and Resiliosync - both are better on battery than conventional file transfer mechanisms, and they don’t require babysitting. They simply sync files as you define.
I was using sync thing and syncfork previously, but they didn’t allow me to sort my new files into the existing structures without getting on the computer and sorting them that way. Id like to cut out the middleman that is my desktop and just move things directly to the server if possible.
Yea, that’s a challenging part for sure, one that I still deal with.
It can be done, but you need to configure the sync jobs “just so”. Send only from the phone, don’t sync deletions, etc.
I have found these 2 smb clients working.
f-droid.org/…/com.wa2c.android.cifsdocumentsprovi…
f-droid.org/packages/de.schliweb.sambalite
And good ol’ ghost commander too, like everybody here :)
You probably just misread, but just to note that SFTP is different from SMB. They’re similar in purpose, but basically competing protocols…
Scio@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Material Files has good SFTP support.
bonenode@piefed.social 2 weeks ago
True, I am using it regularly. However large transfers that take a long time have the tendency to crash quite frequently unless you leave the app open and the screen on, in my experience.
So at some point I setup Syncthing with a specififc folder on my phone that during charging the phone just gets synced with my server. Yes, the syncthing-fork that had some drama recently.
Redjard@reddthat.com 2 weeks ago
I also find it to be very slow on many networks, and even in ideal conditions it might get 2MB/s when the phone has a 10MB/s connection.