Flying Carpet is a free, open-source Mac utility that moves files directly between two devices by creating a temporary Wi-Fi hotspot — no router, no cable, no cloud account required.
What is Flying Carpet?
Flying Carpet is a peer-to-peer file transfer tool that bypasses your network entirely. When you need to move something from a Mac to a Windows PC, an iPhone, or an Android phone, Flying Carpet spins up an ad-hoc wireless link between the two machines and ships the file straight across — no Dropbox intermediary, no AirDrop exclusivity headaches, no USB hunting.
The project lives on GitHub and is actively maintained. Installation via Homebrew Cask takes about thirty seconds, and the interface is deliberately minimal: pick a file, choose send or receive, hand the other person a one-time password, and watch the progress bar.
What does Flying Carpet do best?
Flying Carpet excels at cross-platform transfers where the usual shortcuts break down. AirDrop is gorgeous — until the recipient is on Windows. iCloud Drive wants a subscription and an account. Bluetooth file sharing is technically possible and practically painful. Flying Carpet fills that gap with a single window and zero sign-in friction.
- No shared network needed. Both devices connect directly to each other, which matters in hotels, conference halls, and client offices where you can't trust or join the local Wi-Fi.
- Cross-platform by design. The same app runs on macOS, Windows, and Linux; mobile clients handle iOS and Android. You can send from a MacBook Pro to a Surface Laptop without touching a USB drive.
- One-time passwords. Each session generates a fresh credential. There is no persistent pairing to manage and no credential to rotate later.
- Works offline. Because it creates its own link, it operates in airplane mode or in locations with no internet at all.
I have used it repeatedly to hand off large video exports to a colleague on Windows when we're sitting in a room together with no shared network handy. Speeds are solid — constrained by whatever Wi-Fi radio you're working with, but comfortably faster than anything involving an upload step.
Is Flying Carpet free?
Yes — Flying Carpet is completely free to download and use. The source code is published on GitHub under an open-source licence, there are no paid tiers, and there are no ads. It is supported by the developer and community contributors in the spirit of practical open-source tooling.
Who should use Flying Carpet?
Flying Carpet is the right tool for anyone who regularly moves large files between machines that don't share an ecosystem. If you work in a mixed Mac-and-Windows office, collaborate with Android users, travel frequently, or do on-site client work where network access is unpredictable, it should be a permanent resident in your Applications folder.
It is deliberately not the right tool for syncing a folder continuously (use Syncthing for that), for sending files between two Macs you own (AirDrop is faster with zero setup), or for sharing something with many people at once. The one-to-one, one-at-a-time model is a feature, not a limitation — it keeps the interface honest and the security model clean.
Developers and sysadmins will appreciate that there is nothing running in the background when the app is closed; it does not install a launch agent or request any background permissions. It does one thing and then it stops.
What are the best Flying Carpet alternatives?
The closest conceptual alternative is LocalSend, which also does LAN-based direct transfer across platforms and is similarly open-source. LocalSend requires both devices to be on the same network already, though, which Flying Carpet does not. Warpinator (Linux-native, ported to other platforms) follows the same pattern.
For pure Mac-to-Mac transfers, AirDrop wins on convenience. For persistent folder sync, Syncthing is the community standard. For teams sending files through a lightweight hosted link, Wormhole (wormhole.app) is worth a look — though it routes through servers rather than directly. Flying Carpet's niche — offline, router-free, cross-platform, zero account — is one none of those alternatives quite covers.
How does Flying Carpet compare to AirDrop?
AirDrop is faster to initiate between two Apple devices and integrates seamlessly into Finder and the share sheet. Flying Carpet wins on every other axis: it crosses the Apple-boundary to reach Windows and Android, it works with no internet and no router, and it does not depend on Bluetooth discovery behaving itself. I keep both — AirDrop for same-ecosystem quick transfers, Flying Carpet for everything else. The two tools are complements, not competitors.
