How to (quickly) share files between two Macs?

[bearinthetown]

Hi guys,

I have a 50 GB file to send from one MacBook to another. Is there any fast way to transfer it? Airdrop is relatively slow, perhaps there is a faster method taking advantage of being on the same Wi-Fi network?

 

[Juicy Box]

Hi guys,

I have a 50 GB file to send from one MacBook to another. Is there any fast way to transfer it? Airdrop is relatively slow, perhaps there is a faster method taking advantage of being on the same Wi-Fi network?

Ethernet would probably be faster then wifi.

 

[bearinthetown]

I'm not buying any dongle any soon, so I can forget about ethernet. I also don't use wired connection at all, so...

 

[Juicy Box]

How about an external drive or thumb drive?

I have hardly ever used AirDrop and never really had a reason to use it. I may have used it twice.

I don't know if AirDrop is slower than normal wifi transfers, but there are other solutions.

I have file sharing turned on in the sharing preferences and connect to my other computers within a finder window. Doing this with wifi will be much slower than Ethernet, but maybe it will be faster than AirDrop?

What is nice about this is that I can quickly connect to the other Mac from the finder window, drag and drop, and walk away. With Ethernet, 50GB file would transfer in a few minutes, and over wifi, it depends on the connection, but at my home, probably over 40 minutes.

Other ways:

You can transfer using screen sharing.

You can also transfer using Bonjour, although I haven't done it in a really long time.

 

[jagolden]

How about an external drive or thumb drive?

I have hardly ever used AirDrop and never really had a reason to use it. I may have used it twice.

I don't know if AirDrop is slower than normal wifi transfers, but there are other solutions.

I have file sharing turned on in the sharing preferences and connect to my other computers within a finder window. Doing this with wifi will be much slower than Ethernet, but maybe it will be faster than AirDrop?

What is nice about this is that I can quickly connect to the other Mac from the finder window, drag and drop, and walk away. With Ethernet, 50GB file would transfer in a few minutes, and over wifi, it depends on the connection, but at my home, probably over 40 minutes.

Other ways:

You can transfer using screen sharing.

You can also transfer using Bonjour, although I haven't done it in a really long time.

I second the thumb drive method if you don’t want to use airdrop or iCloud.

 

[Juicy Box]

I second the thumb drive method if you don’t want to use airdrop or iCloud.

A fast thumb drive or external drive would most likely be the quickest way to transfer, not counting wired solutions.

 

[PowerMacBook]

USB-c to USB-c?

 

[bearinthetown]

USB-c to USB-c?

No USB-C to USB-A.

 

[cram501]

Copy it to an external disk/usb thumb drive.

Enable SSH on the target and transfer directly over the network with an sftp client like filezilla.

 

[Fishrrman]

50 gigabytes?

External drive.... sneakernet.