Honourable mentions
+Comprador isn't the only good way to move files between a phone and a Mac, and it + stands on open-source work that came before it. Honest brokerage means saying so. Here are the + projects we tip our hat to.
+ +The ones we stand on
+OpenMTP is the project + Comprador was forked from. It's a free, open-source MTP app for macOS that gives you a dedicated + dual-pane file-manager window, and for years it was the answer for Android-on-Mac. Comprador took + a different shape — a Finder volume instead of a window, and a clean reimplementation underneath — + but the repository began as OpenMTP's, and the debt is real.
+libmtp is the engine. It's the C + library that actually speaks the Media Transfer Protocol to your device — the decade-plus of + reverse-engineering and per-device quirk-handling that makes any of this possible. Comprador is, + in honest terms, a friendly face on libmtp's work. It ships bundled in the app, with its licence.
+ +Kindred libraries
+Comprador isn't the only project that pries a closed device open and hands everyone the result — + it belongs to a long tradition of it. libimobiledevice + did for the iPhone what libmtp did for MTP: a volunteer community reverse-engineered Apple's locked + sync protocols so any operating system could talk to an iPhone or iPad — no iTunes, no jailbreak — + and then gave the work away. libgphoto2 + does the same for digital cameras, the decades of protocol-wrangling behind gPhoto2. All three are + one act of generosity pointed at different hardware, freely licensed, and Comprador is a small + Mac-shaped continuation of it.
+ +For a job we don't do
+KDE Connect and its macOS client + Soduto move files over + Wi-Fi, not USB. Comprador is deliberately USB-only, so if you'd rather not reach for a cable — and + you want notifications, clipboard sync and remote control thrown in — this is the wireless half of + the story. Apple or not, you want your devices in symphony.
+LocalSend is the open-source way to do the + same across your own network — fling a file from phone to laptop, or between any two platforms, with + no account, no cloud, and nothing leaving the local Wi-Fi. Think AirDrop that doesn't care who made + your devices.
+scrcpy does a different job + again: it mirrors and controls your Android screen from the Mac over USB, and it's some of the + most-loved free software in the Android world (Apache-2.0). Its one catch is the very thing Comprador + spares you — it speaks ADB, so you'll need Developer Options and USB debugging switched on. For files + that's friction we'd rather skip; for driving the whole phone from your desk, it's well worth it.
+ +The one that came before
+Android File Transfer is + where almost everyone started, and the reason this whole category exists. Google quietly pulled its + download in early 2024, and it's now effectively gone: unmaintained, a 4 GB file cap, and + increasingly broken on Apple Silicon. We mention it because it walked so the rest could mount.
+ +On Linux none of this is needed in the same way — + simple-mtpfs, jmtpfs, and GNOME's gvfs + already expose MTP devices through the file manager. Comprador exists because macOS doesn't.
+ +The look of the place
+Comprador wears two-hundred-year-old engravings, and we owe that to people long gone and to the + institutions that keep their work free. The butterfly on the pomegranate in the icon is a detail + from a 1705 plate by Maria Sibylla Merian — an early naturalist who documented + insect metamorphosis from life — engraved by Pieter Sluyter. The shifting backdrop + behind every page is the work of Filippo Morghen, an 18th-century Italian engraver, + from his series imagining fantastical life on the Moon.
+Both reach us, scanned and unlocked, through the + Public Domain Image Archive and the + Biodiversity Heritage Library + with the Smithsonian. The works are public domain worldwide; the organizations that digitize and + release them are the reason a small free app can dress itself in museum-grade art for nothing. The + typefaces are the same kind of gift — Bona Nova, Igino Marini's IM Fell Double Pica SC, Fasthand and + Syne Mono, all offered freely under the SIL Open Font License. Full credits and licences are in the + project's third-party notices.
+ + +