UbuntuHandbook

This simple tutorial shows how to use your Android or iOS Phone as remote input (e.g, touchpad, send command) for Ubuntu and other Linux Desktop.

KDE community has an popular free open-source software project called KDE Connect. It enables ability to communicate between your computer (Linux, macOS, and Windows) and mobile devices (Android and iOS) in local network.

With it, you can send photos, videos, and files between paired devices, share clipboard, and do remote actions such as:

- Send remote commands, such as log out, power-off, restart, and custom commands.
- Use your phone as touchpad for PC.
- Slideshow remote
- Remote Multimedia control

There are as well features to send SMS from PC, “Ring” your phone to help find it, and browser your files on Mobile Phone. However, the features may NOT work due to either permission issues or requirement of running mobile app in foreground.

KDE Connect has officially reached the first stable 1.0 release after a year of development. And now it’s made into Kubuntu Backports Landing PPA.

KDE Connect is a project that aims to communicate all your devices. For example, with KDE Connect you can receive your phone notifications on your computer, or just use your phone as a remote control for your desktop.

New features in KDEConnect 1.0:

Trigger custom commands from your phone
Reply to SMS messages from your desktop
Receive desktop notifications on your phone
TLS encryption

For more details, read the official announcement.

How to install KDE Connect 1.0 in Ubuntu 16.04:

Kubuntu Backports Landing PPA is a test repository for packages that will land in KUbuntu Backports PPA.

1. Open terminal and add the PPA

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:kubuntu-ppa/backports-landing

2. This build uses the old packaging, you need to remove the old kdeconnect-plasma package before installing the new release:

sudo apt remove kdeconnect-plasma

3. Update and install KDEConnect 1.0:

sudo apt update && sudo apt install kdeconnect

And also install the latest KDE Connect in Android device from Google Play.

Undo / Restore the changes:

To downgrade installed packages and libraries from that repository, run command the purge the PPA:

sudo apt install ppa-purge && sudo ppa-purge ppa:kubuntu-ppa/backports-landing

In addition, the maintainer offers a separate PPA with KDEConnect 1.0 packages for Ubuntu 16.10, and Ubuntu 16.04. However, the 16.04 build requires Qt5 core libraries >= 5.6.0.