Hi HN,
I’m Rajiv, a software engineer turned Math teacher living in the mountains, where I like to slow down life while still building useful software.
I recently built DroidDock, a lightweight and modern macOS desktop app that lets you browse and manage files on your Android device via ADB. After 12 years in software development, I wanted a free, clean, and efficient tool because existing solutions were either paid, clunky, or bloated.
Features include multiple view modes, thumbnail previews for images/videos, intuitive file search, file upload/download, and keyboard shortcuts. The backend uses Rust and Tauri for performance.
You can download the latest .dmg from the landing page here: https://rajivm1991.github.io/DroidDock/ Source code is available on GitHub: https://github.com/rajivm1991/DroidDock
I’d appreciate your feedback on usability, missing features, or bugs. Thanks for checking it out!
— Rajiv
Don't wanna be killjoy, but specifically since "sleek" and "native" is mentioned many times, I'd say that's not what one expects from a sleek macOS application to say the least.
I'd expect something like Cyberduck quality UI, as an example. The author should aim to mimic system UI in my opinion as closely as possible (or integrate inside Finder).
Indeed, at first glance I thought the UI is a preliminary Electron one (there are nicer Electron apps for sure).
UI-wise it’s effectively the same, just built with the macOS specific webview underneath.
Appreciate your feedback! I hear you on the importance of a truly native macOS experience, improving the macOS native look and feel is definitely on my priority
That would require building this in Swift.
Ah it would be awesome to have an adb explorer within Cyberduck
I wouldn't dare to call an app with a webview approach (be that tauri or electron), react, typescript and the whole frontend Pandora's box "sleek", but each to his own. I find using the adb bridge for such operation a bit of an overkill, but fortunately I don't own Apple made devices this year so I don't face such problems; maybe drastic times call for drastic measures: Apple's and Google's hatred towards end users is palpable these days. I took a quick look at the source and the naming convention is not "conventional" and the lack of eslint/prettier made me raise my eyebrows (raised it high enough to not want to touch this project with a ten foot pole), just like the 2452 line main App.tsx and the rampant useEffect abuse in it - but again, I'm not the target audience, maybe this is super useful for the poster and aesthetics have always been subjective.
Appreciate the code review eyes and honesty . Yeah the current App.tsx is admittedly dense.. refactoring and adding linting/prettier is next on the list. The choice of React and Tauri was pragmatic to move fast with technologies I’m comfortable with, but I’m open to suggestions to improve code quality and maintainability.
For those who want to use Google's Android File Transfer app for Mac, which for some reason isn't regularly available from Google anymore, it's still available by direct download: https://dl.google.com/dl/androidjumper/mtp/current/AndroidFi...
What really grinds my gears is that I have devices that only work with AFT and not OpenMTP. Like my Hisense A9. Because AFT will crash if you try to transfer hundreds of files. I wish I could get rid of AFT but I can't
I also have a usb-c flash drive for copying as well.
Amazon has a great MTP app but it only works with Kindles.
Does the app itself still work?
I have used it a year ago with macOS 14 or 15 and it worked. I've had problems copying too many files at once (don't remember the problem exactly), that's why I only copy about 100 at a time.
Your mileage may vary.
What we really need is someone to implement this using FUSE so we can just mount the phone directly and treat its file system like .... a file system.
EDIT: ok - it exists
For those who want a simpler way to do this wirelessly, PlainApp has been great for me:
Looks vibe coded?
The CLAUDE.md file is right there, so they are probably using agentic coding.
But why does it matter? Does the app not work? I don't have a Mac, can't check.
Counter question: How do you know it works?
A file manager better be rock solid, I don't want a bug to delete any files or do other shenanigans.
That is a valid question.
But that would apply to any app that deals with files like this one does.
This one is open source and we can run some code analysis on it, compile locally, etc. I am not well versed in security checks but I guess you get the idea.
Especially the 'design' which couldn't be less Mac-native if it tried
You can see that it is[0].
Of course it is.
As usual, it is low quality and has zero tests.
This situation reminds me of the Visual Basic apps in the nineties. It was possible to write good quality software with VB and some people did. Nonetheless the majority was dross and the fact that an app was written in VB was a strong indicator of poor quality.
agents should agentically create high quality unit tests
Agents are really good at writing unit tests, but only if you clarify exactly WHAT should be tested. Otherwise they generate slop which passes, but don't catch any bugs nor regression.
Ugh. This term can't die fast enough.
What term would you suggest instead? Agent-assisted slop?
Not bad; anything that actually mentions "AI" would be better than "vibe." That doesn't tell you anything.
Why do you say that?
Because it is true. Claude did almost all of it.
It appears very "vibe coded", the application makes use of the stereotypical AI gradient in the top bar of the application.
The README.md uses a ton of Emojis in the feature Setting.
100% AI.
Don't know why this comment was flagged, this is exactly what is going on here. AI is famous for these purple gradients and the website reeks "vibe-coded", this is 100% how Claude makes websites, including the already mentioned gradients, emojis, style, etc.
And of course every commit is Co-Authored by Claude Code with excessive commit descriptions also created by Claude. Is this really something we want to see on Hacker News? I wouldn't trust such an application.
Nothing against AI coding but letting AI take the wheel 100% of the time and not even mention it (like he coded it himself) is very dishonest.
Not exactly what beautiful looks like on a Mac.
appreciate your honest comments.. I want DroidDock to be both beautiful and functional, balancing modern design trends with macOS idioms. yes, feedback like this helps me iterate toward a better experience
I must admit I haven't really tried it, but what's wrong with hooking up an Android phone to a Mac? Can't you browse files like you can on other computers?
I don't think using ADB is the right way to go about it. Normalizing elevated shell permissions just to copy files just feels like going the wrong way about it. Unless that's the only way to get decent Android file management done on Mac, of course.
No, you can't. You need a special app to browse a recent android phone or kindle on a mac
That's pretty annoying. I swear you used to be able to, what changed?
Edit: I thought Apple supported MTP but I guess they never did? That's a weird limitation for an OS to have.
It makes a lot more sense when you consider that Apple's business model relies heavily on keeping customers locked into their ecosystem.
Clearly a Mac user should also have an iPhone, or face the repurcussions for using a non-Apple device.
macOS has limited support for MTP.. native browsing of Android devices is very limited or broken. Using ADB is admittedly a workaround, but it provides broader device compatibility and control, especially on newer Android versions
MTP is slower than adb in my experience