Description
Getting a photo from your iPhone onto a Linux laptop usually means a cable or a detour through some chat app, even though AirDrop is right there and only works with Apple's own Wi-Fi chips. omdrop-owl closes that gap: on ordinary hardware without a Broadcom radio it runs the AWDL protocol in userspace, so the iPhone sees your Linux machine as an AirDrop target and files move in both directions.
It is the radio half of omdrop. OWL handles AWDL on a monitor interface and omdrop's own sender and receiver run over it unchanged. The smoothest target is the MediaTek MT7925, as in the Framework 13, where AirDrop works both ways while Wi-Fi stays connected.
Shares the channel with Wi-Fi:AWDL piggybacks on the channel your access point already uses (it has to be 6, 44 or 149), and the monitor interface reuses the station's MAC, so you stay online while visible.
Exclusive mode:Cards like the Intel AX201 drop injected frames while associated, so they run in exclusive mode instead: Wi-Fi is off while you are visible and goes back to NetworkManager afterwards.
Per-driver profiles:Each Wi-Fi driver gets one line in owl-profiles saying how it should run. Unlisted cards only run after you opt in, and test-card.sh walks you through a photo each way and writes a report.
Packaged install:makepkg on Arch, a script that builds a deb on Debian and Ubuntu. Both set up the polkit policy and tell NetworkManager to leave awdl0 and mon0 alone.
It is the radio half of omdrop. OWL handles AWDL on a monitor interface and omdrop's own sender and receiver run over it unchanged. The smoothest target is the MediaTek MT7925, as in the Framework 13, where AirDrop works both ways while Wi-Fi stays connected.
Features
Shares the channel with Wi-Fi:AWDL piggybacks on the channel your access point already uses (it has to be 6, 44 or 149), and the monitor interface reuses the station's MAC, so you stay online while visible.
Exclusive mode:Cards like the Intel AX201 drop injected frames while associated, so they run in exclusive mode instead: Wi-Fi is off while you are visible and goes back to NetworkManager afterwards.
Per-driver profiles:Each Wi-Fi driver gets one line in owl-profiles saying how it should run. Unlisted cards only run after you opt in, and test-card.sh walks you through a photo each way and writes a report.
Packaged install:makepkg on Arch, a script that builds a deb on Debian and Ubuntu. Both set up the polkit policy and tell NetworkManager to leave awdl0 and mon0 alone.
