Better than Quick Share and AirDrop

Quick Share is a useful but flawed feature. It’s incredibly convenient to quickly share files between your Android, Windows, and even iOS devices. Sadly, it’s not the most reliable device in the world. It is often slow to detect devices and transfer files, and is prone to disconnecting. Thankfully, there’s a much better tool that has made my life even easier, and it’s free.

As frustrating as it is to use Quick Share, I’ve resigned myself to using it. None of the alternatives I’ve tried have been any better, always having the same issues or being tied to a subscription model. Then, a few weeks ago, I was listening to the Waveform podcast, and an app called Blip was mentioned. After hearing how reliably this product handles the huge files the MKBHD team works with, I decided to try it out for myself – and I couldn’t be happier.

Blip is easy to use. It is available on Android, Mac, Windows, and iOS, with Linux support coming soon. Once you’ve downloaded it on all your devices, sharing your files is easy. On Windows, you can right-click any file or folder and find the Blip option in the menu. Both Android and iOS show it in the Share menu, just like Quick Share and AirDrop. If you’re sharing on one of your devices, you don’t need to open the app or approve the transfer on the target device. If it’s logged in to the app and turned on, the transfer will happen instantly.

I’m not kidding when I say it’s instant. Transfer speed is limited by your network, not by the service. When I went on vacation last week, I used Blip to transfer 12GB of Sims 4 mods and saves from my desktop to my laptop over Wi-Fi, and it got up to 1.5Gbps. You don’t even need to be on the same network. Transfers can be sent over the Internet, and many times when I was on my holidays, I would blip the photos to my laptop to edit when I returned.

It’s also easier to explain things to other people. My wife signed up after I used it for a few days, and adding her to my app was as easy as finding her email address.

Here’s another advantage of Blip over Quick Share or AirDrop. With those devices, I have to choose the specific device my wife wants to receive the files on. With Blip, I just send it, and the request pops up on all the devices she has, sending the files to whatever device she used to accept the request. The number of cat photos bleeped across our devices is, frankly, worrying. Cat down.

Are there any downsides? Not necessary. Obviously, you need to convince others to download the app, but that’s true for anything that isn’t on your device. If you can get past that hurdle, or if you just need to transfer files for yourself, Blip revolves around something else.

There is a paid version of the service, but I doubt you’ll need it. The benefits of Blip Business are priority speed and direct customer support during peak times. Priority speed only matters if you’re transferring to a device on a different network, so chances are the free version is all you’ll ever need.

I have been using Blip for a month and use it almost every day. Unlike Quick Share, which often fails to send the file or does it so slowly that it takes half an hour to take a screenshot, Blip has been fast and reliable every time. It’s on the list of apps I install on every new device, and I can’t recommend it enough.