I still remember the first time I right-clicked a link on my desktop and it instantly appeared on my phone. It felt like magic. For years, Pushbullet wasn’t just an app; it was the invisible, indispensable glue holding my digital life together. It was the “must-download app” that was “stupid-easy” to use, and for a while, it was perfect.
If you’re reading this, you probably remember that feeling, too. And you definitely know what came next.
The magic faded. The glue dried up.
The Slow, Painful Decline of a Beloved Tool
For me, the frustration built up over time. It wasn’t a single event, but a series of small problems that made my workflow harder to rely on.
When features I’d used for free moved behind the Pro subscription, it changed how I felt about the service. Paying for useful software is reasonable; losing parts of a workflow I’d already come to depend on was frustrating.
Over time, the bugs and uncertainty about support made me less confident in the tool I’d once recommended to everyone.
The biggest disruption to my workflow was the Pushbullet Chrome extension no longer working for me as Chrome moved away from Manifest V2. Sending links between my browser and phone was the feature I relied on most. Losing that connection was what pushed me to look for something else.
The user complaints I collected from the Chrome Web Store at the time reflected similar frustrations:
The Frustrating Search for a Pushbullet Alternative
Like many of you, I started looking for a replacement that fit the way I worked.
I tried Join by Joaoapps, but ran into bugs that made it a difficult fit for my workflow. That’s my experience, rather than a claim that the project is abandoned: Join’s published Chrome extension source uses Manifest V3.
I tried KDE Connect. It’s powerful and open-source, which is fantastic, but I missed a searchable history of the links I’d shared. Keeping those links for later was a central part of what I wanted from a replacement.
I even resorted to messaging myself on private Discord servers just to move a link from my phone to my computer. It was a clunky, inefficient workaround for a problem that had once been solved so elegantly.
I got tired of piecing together workarounds. I decided to build around the part of the experience I missed most: sending something to another device and being able to find it again later.
From Here to There: Introducing fwd
fwd (pronounced “forward”) is the spiritual successor to Pushbullet, re-engineered from the ground up for the modern web. The aim is simple: make sending something between your own devices easy, keep a history you can search, and encrypt the content before it leaves your device.
The first release focuses on a small set of things:
- Chrome, Android and macOS: A Manifest V3 extension for Chrome and Chromium browsers, a native app for Android 8.0 and later, and a native menu bar app for macOS 14 and later. Send from the browser toolbar or right-click menu, Android’s share sheet or app, or the Mac’s menu bar panel. The Mac app receives while the browser is closed, when the app is running and the Mac is awake and online.
- Links, Text and Files: Send a link, a note or a file up to 25 MB to another device, or to all your other devices. File transfers show progress and retry after interruptions. Sending clipboard content is a manual action; there’s no automatic clipboard sync.
- History on Every Device: Sent and received forwards sync across your devices and are searchable locally. Delete a forward from history and the deletion syncs as each device reconnects. Files you’ve already saved outside fwd remain yours.
- End-to-End Encryption: Your devices encrypt forwarded content, files and device names before uploading them. The service stores and relays encrypted data, while still seeing operational metadata such as your email, routing and ciphertext sizes. New devices need approval from an existing device or your saved recovery key. Read the privacy policy.
- Free, During and After the Beta: The beta is free, with 25 MB per file, 1 GB of account storage and 5 devices, and those limits stay as the free plan when the beta ends. The first 100 people to finish setting up fwd became founding members, with a larger plan of 100 MB per file, 5 GB of account storage and 10 devices, free for as long as fwd operates. All 100 places are taken. Future paid plans and prices have not been announced.
Native Linux and Windows apps, Firefox and Safari are future surfaces. They aren’t part of this beta, and we haven’t announced release dates. Notification mirroring, automatic clipboard sync and local-only sync aren’t part of the first release either.
Let’s Build This Together
I’m building fwd around this workflow and want to hear from people who miss it too. I’ll share progress and updates on this blog.
This is our chance to build the tool we’ve all been missing. If you’re tired of the workarounds and want to be part of the solution, your voice is critical.
- Join the waitlist at usefwd.io to be the first to get access.
- Join our official subreddit, r/usefwd, to talk with me, request features, and help shape the future of the product.
Let’s make our devices work together again.