omdrop-owl
airdrop for non-apple devices
The Lens
By Erik Loyd, SaaS CEO and former COO/CFO of an AWS Premier Partner.
Updated Oct 2026
omdrop-owl gets AirDrop working between iPhones and Linux laptops with ordinary Intel, MediaTek or Realtek Wi-Fi. It builds a patched fork of OWL, the SEEMOO lab's open implementation of AWDL (the Apple Wi-Fi link AirDrop rides on), and packages it for Arch, Debian, Fedora and NixOS. The separate omdrop plugin does the sending and receiving. Both are free.
Hardware decides everything. The MediaTek MT7925 in the Framework 13 stays on Wi-Fi while visible. Every tested Intel card uses exclusive mode, which drops your Wi-Fi while visible. The one Qualcomm card tested fails. It installs a root helper behind polkit, and shared mode needs your router on channel 6, 44 or 149. Intel is slow: a 2.4 MB photo takes 10 to 17 seconds on an AX201.
Solo Linux users with an iPhone: free and worth a try if your card is on the green list. Teams: use LocalSend, which works on any hardware once the app is on every device.
The catch: there's no license file. The packaging lists GPL and ISC for the upstream code it builds, but this repo's own scripts and patches carry no grant, so they're all rights reserved. It's also a week old.
Free vs Self-Hosted vs Paid
fully freeFree: Everything. There is no paid edition, account or hosted service. Note the licensing, though: the repo has no LICENSE file, so its own scripts, patches and packaging are all rights reserved by default. The PKGBUILD and Nix package declare GPL-3.0-or-later (OWL), GPL-2.0-only (omdrop-awdl's tools) and ISC (radiotap), which cover the upstream components it builds and ships.
Self-hosted: Runs on your own Linux laptop. Install from the AUR (yay -S omdrop-owl), build a .deb or .rpm from source, or use the Nix flake module. It installs a root-owned helper into /usr/lib/omdrop with a polkit policy, a NetworkManager rule keeping awdl0, mon0 and awdlibss0 unmanaged, and a systemd .link file; TCP 8771 must be open on awdl0. You also need the omdrop plugin 0.16.0 or newer (Omarchy bar panel, or its CLI on other distros). Works only on listed Wi-Fi cards; Intel cards drop Wi-Fi while visible, and shared mode requires the access point on channel 6, 44 or 149.
Paid: There is no paid tier and no paid dependency. AirDrop itself is a free Apple feature; the only cost is the right Wi-Fi card if yours isn't supported (the MT7612U USB adapter is on the working list).
Free, but only if your Wi-Fi card is on the supported list; otherwise the real cost is a compatible card or USB adapter.
What to do by team size
- Solo
- free, if your Wi-Fi card is on the supported list
- Small team
- free, but LocalSend is the saner choice across mixed laptops
- Medium team
- skip; a root Wi-Fi helper that drops connectivity on Intel cards is not a fleet tool
- Large team
- skip; unlicensed, week-old radio code is a hard sell for IT
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License: No license (all rights reserved)
No LICENSE file, so the repo's own scripts and patches carry no grant. The upstream components it builds are GPL and ISC.
Commercial use: ✗ Restricted
About
- Owner
- Tristan (User)
- Stars
- 2,981
- Forks
- 227