Instantly Transfer Files Between PC and Phone with QR Codes Using qrcp

What is qrcp?

qrcp is a lightweight command‑line utility that creates a temporary HTTP server, encodes its address in a QR code, and lets you transfer files between a computer and a mobile device simply by scanning the code.

How it works

The program binds a web server to a random port on the machine’s Wi‑Fi interface, generates a URL of the form http://{address}:{port}/{random_path}, and prints a QR code that encodes this URL. Scanning the QR code opens the URL in the phone’s browser, where the file can be downloaded or uploaded.

Installation

You can install qrcp either via Go (requires Go 1.8) or by downloading a pre‑built binary. go get github.com/claudiodangelis/qrcp Or download the latest release, place the binary in a directory on your $PATH (e.g., /usr/local/bin) and make it executable:

chmod +x /usr/local/bin/qrcp

Basic usage

Send a single file: qrcp MyDocument.pdf Send multiple files – qrcp automatically creates a zip archive and removes it after the transfer:

# Multiple files
qrcp MyDocument.pdf IMG0001.jpg

# Whole folder
qrcp Documents/

Compress before sending: qrcp --zip LongVideo.avi Receive files (the tool shows an upload page; the received files are saved in the current directory): qrcp receive To receive into a specific directory, run the same command from that directory or move the files after transfer.

Selecting a network interface

By default qrcp picks a suitable interface. Use -i or --interface to choose one explicitly:

# Bind to a specific interface
qrcp -i tun0 MyDocument.pdf

# Bind to all interfaces (0.0.0.0)
qrcp -i any MyDocument.pdf

This is useful when transferring files from cloud VMs such as EC2, DigitalOcean Droplets, or GCP instances.

Visual guide

Project statistics

On GitHub the repository https://github.com/claudiodangelis/qrcp has earned 5.6 K stars and 286 forks.