Android App of the day: SwiFTP v1.11

SwiFTP is an FTP server app you can run on your Android phone. It only works on Wifi. I'm assuming the telco firewalls would make access over 3G problematic. I like it because it's simple and it's one more way you can get data on and off your phone with simple tools. In this case, you're making data available to anyone on your IP subnet with an FTP client.

SwiFTP seems to run fine in the background, so you can carry on doing other things with your phone while it's busy serving data to whatever clients may be accessing it or uploading files to it.

With a web browser, you'd go to the URL the app presents. Mine was "ftp://192.168.2.101:2121/". But uploading using a web browser can be problematic. Instead, I used "ncftp" (free FTP client app for most OSes) and that was the best of all. I was able to connect to the phone and upload / download what I wanted. The ncftp command that worked for me was:


ncftp -P 2121 -u userid -p password 192.168.2.101

Used once, ncftp let me save it as a 'bookmark' called "Magic"...and I can now access my phone's files on the sdcard via the SwiFTP server by simply typing in "ncftp Magic" and pressing enter. SwiFTP supports passive mode data transfer by default.

As all data on the sdcard is accessible by any app on the phone, any file uploaded to your phone is immediately available for whatever purpose was intended. SwiFTP provides a quick way to copy files to your phone from any local PC on your network without having to connect it to a computer with the USB cable. It also appears to support multiple logins from the same user, though I have not tested simultaneous data transfer from two clients. I'll have to test it to see. :-)