Send Files From Your Phone to a PC Without a Cable

You took a photo, scanned a receipt or downloaded a PDF on your phone, and now you need it on your computer. Finding a cable, unlocking the phone, trusting the computer and digging through folders takes longer than it should. Emailing it to yourself works, but it fills your inbox and shrinks large files.

Dropzy does it in a browser tab on each device. Nothing to install, no account, and everything deletes itself after a few hours.

The quick version

If your phone and PC are on the same Wi-Fi:

1. Open Dropzy on your computer. The home page is Wi-Fi Share.
2. Open Dropzy on your phone in any browser.
3. On the phone, tap Choose files and pick what you want to send.
4. The file appears on your computer. Click it to download, or use Download all to get everything as one ZIP.

That’s it. Both devices find each other automatically because they share the same network.

Picking the right mode

Dropzy has three ways to share. For phone-to-PC, you’ll almost always use one of the first two.

• Wi-Fi Share is the default. Use it when both devices are on the same network, like at home or in the office. Each item stays for 2 hours.
• Private Share gives you a private link and QR code. Use it when your phone is on mobile data and your PC is on Wi-Fi, or when you’re on a network you don’t trust. It’s end-to-end encrypted and lasts 2 hours, extendable to 6.
• Room is for groups. It’s handy if you want to collect files from several people, but it’s more than you need for moving files between your own two devices.

Step by step with Wi-Fi Share

On your computer

Go to the home page and leave the tab open. You’ll see your device listed with a friendly name, something like “Blue Fox”. You can rename it if you like, which helps when you have several devices in the same house.

On your phone

Open the same page in Safari, Chrome or whatever browser you use. Your phone gets its own name too. Tap Choose files, select photos, videos or documents, and send them.

Back on your computer

The items appear in the list with thumbnails for images. Click one to save it, or grab them all at once with Download all. If the file is only meant for a single use, you can turn on Delete after 1 download before sending.

What happens to the file on the way

When both devices are online at the same time, the file goes directly from your phone’s browser to your computer’s browser. It isn’t uploaded to a server at all. There’s no fixed size limit in that case. The real limit is free space on the receiving device.

If a direct connection can’t be made, or the other device isn’t open at that moment, Dropzy falls back by itself to uploading the file temporarily. Uploaded files can be up to 2 GB each and are deleted automatically when they expire. You don’t have to choose between the two; it just works out which one to use.

Not showing up? Try these

Your computer doesn’t see your phone. Some setups hide devices from each other even on the same Wi-Fi, for example a VPN on the PC, iCloud Private Relay on an iPhone, or a phone that quietly switched to mobile data. Look for the Connect a device card on the home page. It shows a QR code and a 6-digit pair code. Scan the QR with your phone, or open the Join page and type in the code.

You’re on a busy or public network. On large networks like a café or campus, Dropzy hides other people’s items so you don’t see a stranger’s files. To find your own item, use its 4-character code.

The devices are on different networks. Switch to Private Share. Open it on the computer, scan the QR code with your phone, and you’re connected no matter where each device is.

Photos arrive as HEIC. iPhones save photos in HEIC by default. Depending on your settings, the iPhone may convert them to JPEG when sharing or keep them as HEIC. Windows can need the free HEIF Image Extensions from the Microsoft Store to open HEIC files. There’s more on this in the iPhone to Windows guide.

Large video on an iPhone. Browsers on iPhone and iPad cap direct transfers at about 1 GB. Uploaded files can be up to 2 GB, and for anything larger a cable is still the better tool.

Going the other way

Everything above works in reverse. Drop a file onto the page on your PC, or paste a screenshot with Ctrl+V, and it shows up on your phone. On an iPhone or iPad, images come with a Save to Photos button so they land straight in your camera roll.

Need to move a link or a snippet of text instead of a file? See sharing text and links between phone and computer.

A note on privacy

Dropzy doesn’t ask for an account and doesn’t use cookies to track you. Files sent directly never touch a server. Uploaded files are stored only for a few hours and then deleted automatically. If you’re sending something sensitive, Private Share is end-to-end encrypted: the key lives in the link itself, so the server never sees file names or contents.

Want the details? How it works explains it in plain language.