Basically, I’d like to be able to get SMS messages from my android phone sent to my Linux laptop, primarily for getting 2FA codes, since that’s the way pretty much every business-type site out there insists on doing it.
Anything KDE-related, it seems to me, makes you download a lot of other software that you don’t really need, and so I’d like to go another route if possible (not dissing KDE, it’s just not for me!).
KDE-Connect’s AlternativeTo page lists a lot of alternatives that aren’t really alternatives, and many seem to have been discontinued. One of them, Sefirah, has a lot of .dll files that come with it, which I believe are only for Microsoft, and so that doesn’t really inspire a lot of confidence. Anyway, thanks in advance for any suggestions.
(also, not using GNOME desktop or ZorinOS, so those options unfortunately won’t work).
THE VERDICT: KDE Connect is very clunky, but passable . . . I guess. I dimly remember trying this many years ago, and it doesn’t seem to have improved much, if at all. Kind of seems like the devs haven’t really given it much love as of late, which is too bad. Ok for now, but I’ll be looking for a replacement.
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I think they do not want all of the dependencies that come with KDE Connect like Qt. A small price to pay for probably the best phone/desktop sharing application available.
Got it up and running. Is there any way to delete SMS messages from the desktop? Even if I delete the messages from my phone they remain on the desktop.
Anything KDE-related, it seems to me, makes you download a lot of other software that you don’t really need, and so I’d like to go another route if possible (not dissing KDE, it’s just not for me!).
Are you sure these aren’t just dependencies? That’s the way of linux, do one thing, do it well. Since KDE uses qt, you likely need to install the libraries and a few other packages it might rely on.
If it really is a bunch of stuff you don’t need, make sure you have “install recommended” disabled in whatever package manager you’ve got. I learned that the hard way when I installed texmaker and it tried to install 10GB of packages.
Anything KDE-related, it seems to me, makes you download a lot of other software that you don’t really need
If you want to avoid KDE dependencies and don’t have Gnome, there are others clients for KDE Connect other than the official kde’s one and GSConnect. So maybe kde connect is still a viable option for you.
On Phosh I was using Valent but there are others like Conecto (discontinued but should work anyway), Konnect (for headless systems, so maybe not for you) and Linux-Remote (check readme for todos).
I’m sure there are more clients I didn’t find with a fast lookup. Hope it helps.
Valent is a (nightly) Flatpak that implements the KDE Connect protocol.
Here’s a ton as listed on the brilliant site AlternativeTo.net:
Esp for 2FA getting notifications from phone to desktop (with KDE Connect in my case) is almost useless since most of the 2FA services seem to tag the SMS with a “sensitive” tag or something, because for the last few month I’ve been getting the notification all right but it’s not showing me the 2FA.
There is GSconnect, it’s the gnome version of KDE Connect. Haven’t tried it, though.
It is just a wrapper around KDE connect as a gnome shell plugin
That is not correct, gsconnect has no dependency on KDE Connect, it is an independent implementation of the same protocol, not a wrapper
maybe using scrcpy is an option for you? like /u/paper_moon@lemmy.world said, using a password manager for 2fa is great (like actually so so great, and easier to back up/not lose access)–but also, a lot of services only use sms… in that case KDE-Connect is sorta the best.
another option for sms 2fa is google messages–but there are privacy concerns there for sure. I really wish there was something selfhosted/open source that was more light weight and similar to messages.google.com.
Just saw this, Android 2 Linux Notifications on F-Droid, anyone tried it yet? The question for my purposes, of course, will be whether or not it will show the content of the notifications, which I’ll need for 2FA codes. Might just give it a try . . .
I find the KDE Connect display to be a bit clunky, but if you’re on Cinnamon there are two applets which help to smooth out the experience a bit.
