Text, links, photos, files and the clipboard between your iPhone, Mac and Linux computers, over your own Tailscale network. Free and open source, made by Nightdrive.
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A mailbox between your devices, over Tailscale
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Read the full README ↗A mailbox between your devices, over Tailscale.
Send texts, links, photos, files and the clipboard between your phone and your computers. Copy a code on the phone, press Send Clipboard, paste it on the computer. What you send waits in the box until the other device picks it up, and the phone is notified when a computer sends it something.
Tailscale connects the devices, encrypts the traffic and keeps Ferry off the internet. Each computer answers only its owner, and only on the tailnet (tailscale serve, not Funnel). Your texts and files never pass through a server of ours: only a notification does, encrypted for the phone, on its way to Apple. Ferry trusts everyone who can use the computer it runs on, so it suits a computer that is yours alone. A computer's tailnet name shows in public certificate logs, as every Tailscale HTTPS name does.
Ferry is made by Nightdrive. More, and the privacy policy: nightdrive.sh/ferry.
Ferry is in public beta. The iPhone app is on TestFlight, and the Mac and Linux versions are on the releases page. Tell us what works and what doesn't: Feedback and support.
You need Tailscale on every device, signed in as the same user, with MagicDNS and HTTPS certificates turned on for your tailnet (the admin console's DNS page). Then a computer running Ferry, and the iPhone app.
.dmg from nightdrive.sh/ferry or the releases. A menu bar app: drop files on its icon to send them, and its popover shows what arrived. It keeps itself up to date, and works with Tailscale from the App Store, the standalone app or the open-source tailscaled.Adding a phone: Add Device on a computer shows a QR code of a link to https://nightdrive.sh/ferry/add, with the computer's address in the link's fragment, which a browser never sends, so the site doesn't learn the computer's name. The iPhone's Camera opens the link in the Ferry app, which adds the computer, and the app's own scanner reads it too. Without the app, the page says what is needed.
curl -fsSL https://github.com/nightdrive-sh/ferry/releases/latest/download/install.sh | bash
The script (linux/install.sh, meant to be read) installs what Ferry uses with apt, dnf or pacman (Ubuntu 24.04 and Debian 13 or later, Fedora, Arch), puts Ferry in ~/.local/lib/ferry with the ferry command in ~/.local/bin, and starts it as a systemd user service, ferry.service, published on the tailnet with tailscale serve at https://<computer>.<tailnet>.ts.net/ferry/. Run again, it updates Ferry. --beta takes pre-releases too, --from linux installs a checkout's linux/ folder instead of downloading, and --no-tray leaves out the tray icon.
Ferry's window is in the desktop's apps as "Ferry": what your devices sent (click a text to copy it, a file to open it, or drag it out), the device sends go to, and Aa (type a text), Send Clipboard and + (files). Files dropped on the window go to the device you drop them on, and Add Device shows the QR code for a phone. Until Ferry can be reached, the window says what's missing (Tailscale, its login, HTTPS certificates, the right to publish, the server) and does what it can by itself. Where the desktop has a tray (KDE, Ubuntu's GNOME, Cinnamon, XFCE, Waybar), Ferry's icon sits there from login with a count of what arrived; a click opens the window. "Send with Ferry" in the file manager (GNOME Files: Scripts; Dolphin; Nemo) and Open With in KDE send the files you picked. When a newer release is out, the window says so and installs it with one button, as ferry update does; a beta install follows betas.
It needs Tailscale with MagicDNS and HTTPS certificates turned on for the tailnet (the admin console's DNS page), and the right to publish without sudo, which the script gives if Tailscale is there (sudo tailscale set --operator=$USER).
A computer that ran Nightdrive's Ferry plugin keeps everything: its state (the box, the phones' notifications, the computers it knows) moves from ~/.local/share/nightdrive/ferry to ~/.local/share/ferry, and the plugin's nightdrive-ferry.service is turned off.
The ferry command does what the apps do, and ferry help lists all of it:
| Command | What it does |
|---|---|
ferry send [file…] | Sends files, or a text; with nothing, the clipboard. --to DEVICE for another device than the picked one |
ferry devices | Your other computers running Ferry and your phones, the picked one marked |
ferry target [DEVICE] | The device sends go to, or picks another |
ferry list | What's in the box, numbered |
ferry get [n] | An item from the phone (the newest without a number): a text printed, a file saved here |
ferry open <n> / ferry copy <n> | Opens a file, copies a text |
ferry qr | Add Device's QR code, for adding a phone (ferry url is the address itself) |
ferry enable / ferry disable | The service on or off, with its address on the tailnet |
ferry app [file…] | Ferry's window; with files, it sends them to the device you pick |
ferry update [--check] | Installs the newest release, or says whether there is one |
ferry tray [on|off] | Whether the tray icon starts with your desktop |
ferry status, ferry version | Whether it runs, and which Ferry it is |
Files from your devices go to Downloads, with a notification. What a phone sends with Send Clipboard lands on the computer's clipboard (wl-clipboard on Wayland, xclip on X11). A phone without the app (an Android phone) can use the page a Linux computer serves, which does in the browser what the app does: the QR code's page leads to it, and it can be added to the Home Screen. The Mac app serves no such page. Ferry sends to the computer you're using: on GNOME it asks Mutter how long the computer has been idle, on KDE, Hyprland and other Wayland desktops the compositor, on X11 the X server.
For a desktop's own Ferry menu (Nightdrive's top bar is one): ferry list --json is the box and Ferry's state (with setup, what stands in the way and what to do, and update, a newer release), and an executable ~/.config/ferry/hook runs with changed when the box changes or a send goes, and with picked after ferry pick's dialog.
To remove Ferry: ferry disable, then remove ~/.local/lib/ferry, ~/.local/bin/ferry, ~/.config/systemd/user/ferry.service and the files named sh.nightdrive.Ferry* and *ferry* that the install script's header lists (the app's entry, icons, autostart and file manager menus). Its state stays in ~/.local/share/ferry.
Ferry is in beta, so every report helps: say which devices and systems you use.
docs/protocol.md: how the apps talk to a computer running Ferry. Both servers answer it, and anything else that answers it is a Ferry too.FerryKit/: the Swift package with everything that isn't UI: the client, the machine list, the app's state. FerryKit/Sources/FerryServer/ is a computer's side of the protocol in Swift, which the Mac app runs.ios/: the iPhone app, its notification extension and its share extension.macos/: the Mac app.linux/: the Linux server and ferry command (linux/bin/ferry, one Python file), its window and tray icon (linux/app/, GTK 4), the page it serves to phones without the app (linux/web/), its systemd user service and its install script.relay/: the push relay at push.nightdrive.sh (PHP and SQLite), which holds Apple's push key and passes on the notifications it can't read (its README has the API).tools/: fake computers for the simulator (mock-ferry.py), which can't run Tailscale, and the build number.On a Mac with Xcode 27. If xcode-select points to the Command Line Tools, prefix commands with DEVELOPER_DIR=/Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer (the scripts do it themselves).
cd FerryKit && swift test: the package's tests, the Mac's server too.cd linux && python3 -m unittest discover -s tests: the Linux server's and window's tests. On a Mac, uv run --no-project --with cryptography python3 -m unittest discover -s tests brings the module notifications need.cd relay && composer install && vendor/bin/phpunit: the relay's tests.linux/tests/containers.sh [ubuntu] [debian] [fedora] [arch]: installs Ferry with its install script in fresh OrbStack machines, the way a user does, and checks that it runs and answers.macos/build.sh --debug builds the Mac app and runs it; macos/shot.sh takes a picture of its popover.ios/uitest.sh runs the iPhone app's UI tests in the simulator against tools/mock-ferry.py. For a look by hand: python3 tools/mock-ferry.py, then the app launched with -mock.docs/testing-on-device.md is the checklist for a real iPhone with Tailscale.The signing identity (team, bundle IDs, App Group) is Ferry's own: to run the apps on your own devices, change them in the Xcode projects.
Releases are GitHub Releases tagged v<version> (v<version>-beta.N for a pre-release), with the same version on every platform:
linux/release.sh [--beta N] makes the Linux files, ferry-linux.tar.gz and install.sh. Their names carry no version, so releases/latest/download/<name> always finds the latest.macos/build.sh --release [--beta N] makes the Mac's .dmg, Developer ID signed, notarized and stapled, and its item for the update feed (docs/mac-releases.md). --dry-run sends nothing to Apple.ios/build.sh uploads the iPhone app to TestFlight; --archive-only checks that it archives.tools/build-number.sh: a base plus the commit count, so they only grow.MIT (see LICENSE): free to use, read and reuse, and what is released stays that way.
Ferry is made by Nightdrive, sponsored by Feature Design Oy.