Ferryby Nightdrive

A mailbox between
your devices.

Ferry moves text, links, photos, files and the clipboard between your iPhone, your Mac and your Linux computers, over your own Tailscale network. Send something from one device and pick it up on the other: what a computer sends waits in its box until you get to it.

Download Why Ferry?

public beta · iPhone · Mac · Linux · free · MIT licence

Ferry on an iPhone: a photo, a Wi-Fi password, a boarding pass, an address and links received from a MacBook, and the Send Clipboard button

WHY FERRY?

More than files

Ferry is for what you move between your own devices all day: the clipboard, a link, the note you wrote on the phone, the file you want with you when you leave.

The clipboard, both ways

Copy a code on the phone, press Send Clipboard, paste it on the computer. The computer's Send Clipboard works the same way, and on the phone it's one tap from the clipboard.

A mailbox that waits

Each computer keeps a box. What you leave there waits until your phone or another computer picks it up.

Notifications

The phone hears when something arrives, even with Ferry closed. The notification is encrypted on your computer, so no one in between can read it.

Send from any app

Ferry is in the iPhone's share sheet. On the Mac, drop files on its menu bar icon; on Linux, right-click them in the file manager and pick Send with Ferry.

HOW IT WORKS

Your devices, your network

Ferry runs on your computers, and each one keeps its own box. The phone talks to them straight over Tailscale, and computers send to each other the same way. Nothing you send passes through a server of ours.

Only the devices signed in to Tailscale as you can reach Ferry: not the internet, and not other people on a shared tailnet. Ferry trusts everyone who can use the computer it runs on, so it suits a computer that is yours alone.

  • no account
  • no cloud storage
  • no tracking
  • open source
  • several computers
Ferry's menu in Nightdrive's top bar: a link and a photo from the iPhone, a shopping list and a PDF from another computer, and Send Clipboard
On Nightdrive, Ferry lives in the top bar.

GET FERRY

Download

Ferry is free on every platform. Put it on at least one computer: the phone talks to the computers, and the computers to each other. It's in public beta: tell us what works and what doesn't.

iOS 26

iPhone

Send and receive, the clipboard, notifications, and Ferry in the share sheet. The beta is on TestFlight, the App Store comes with 1.0.

TestFlight

macOS 26

Mac

Lives in the menu bar: drop files on the icon, see what arrived, send the clipboard. Updates itself.

Download .dmg

Ubuntu · Debian · Fedora · Arch

Linux

A window and a tray icon. GNOME, KDE and others, Wayland or X11. Run this in a terminal:

curl -fsSL https://nightdrive.sh/ferry/install | bash

On Nightdrive it comes with every install.

On an Android phone, a computer running Ferry for Linux serves a web page that does the same in the browser.

SETUP

Four steps, once

Ferry rides on Tailscale, a free private network between your own devices. If you already use it, you're halfway there.

  1. Tailscale on the computer and the phone, both signed in as the same user. Download Tailscale
  2. HTTPS certificates on. In Tailscale's admin console, under DNS, turn on MagicDNS and HTTPS Certificates. Ferry uses them to publish itself at https://computer.tailnet.ts.net/ferry/, for your devices only.
  3. Ferry on the computer. It checks each of these as it starts, and says what's missing.
  4. Add the phone. Open Add Device in Ferry on the computer and scan the QR code with the iPhone's Camera: Ferry opens and adds the computer. Without the app yet, the link says what to install. Other computers on your tailnet that run Ferry show up by themselves.

SUPPORT

Questions, ideas, trouble

Write to us and tell us which devices you have. Ferry is open source, so you can also read exactly what it does. Ferry is in beta, so tell us what works and what doesn't.