PixelRelay
Browse your Pixel from your Mac. Download photos, videos, and files — or back up the whole phone. All over your local Wi-Fi, without the cloud.
Browse your Pixel from your Mac. Download photos, videos, and files — or back up the whole phone. All over your local Wi-Fi, without the cloud.
Features
Move photos and files between your Pixel and Mac — without sending them through anyone else's servers.
Files travel straight from your Pixel to your Mac over your local Wi-Fi. Nothing is uploaded to a cloud, proxied through a relay, or stored on our servers — we don't operate any.
Every transfer runs over TLS, and your Mac locks onto your specific paired Pixel after the first connection — so only your phone can talk to your Mac.
Open both apps, scan a QR code, done. Pairing locks the two devices together so you don't have to set it up again.
JPEG, HEIC, RAW, 4K video, ZIPs, PDFs, voice memos — if it's on your phone, you can send it. Files arrive in your Downloads folder, untouched.
From your Mac, browse your phone's albums, recent shots, and folders. Pick exactly what you want, then transfer.
Long transfers keep running on Android even when your phone screen is off. The Mac shows real-time progress and resumes cleanly if Wi-Fi blips.
Any Wi-Fi network will do — even one with no internet at all. Coffee shop, hotel, plane, your home network without the modem plugged in.
SwiftUI on the Mac, Jetpack Compose on Android. Each app feels at home on its platform — not a wrapped-web shortcut that runs the same everywhere.
Get Started
Set it up once, transfer forever.
Open PixelRelay on both devices. The Mac shows a QR code, the Pixel scans it. The two are now locked together — no accounts, no setup wizard.
Browse from either side. The Mac can see what's on your Pixel; the Pixel can pick what to send. Multi-select anything — one photo or a thousand.
Files stream directly between the two devices over Wi-Fi. Watch progress in real time. They land in your Downloads folder, full quality, untouched.
PixelRelay has no servers, no accounts, no analytics, no third-party SDKs. Your photos and files travel directly between your Pixel and your Mac — we never see any of it. You can verify by using the app on a Wi-Fi network with no internet.
Privacy PolicyCapabilities
A closer look at what's included on each side.
For You
Built for people stuck between two ecosystems that don't talk to each other.
You picked the best phone camera and the best laptop — and now you can't AirDrop. PixelRelay is the bridge those two devices should have come with.
Tired of your photos getting copied to someone else's data center on the way to your laptop? PixelRelay never touches a cloud.
RAW shoots, 4K clips, weeks of footage on the phone. Move it all in one go, at LAN speed, full quality — no compression, no recompression.
FAQ
Common questions about PixelRelay.
Yes. PixelRelay is free to download and use. There are no ads, no subscriptions, and no required accounts.
No. There are no servers we operate. Your Pixel and your Mac talk directly to each other over your local Wi-Fi network. Your files never reach ApApps, AWS, Google, or any third-party service. You can verify this by using the app on a Wi-Fi network with no internet connection — everything still works.
AirDrop is Apple-only. Nearby Share doesn't support macOS. PixelRelay fills the gap: a real, native cross-platform transfer between Pixel and Mac. It works over Wi-Fi instead of Bluetooth, so transfers are faster — especially for large videos and photo dumps.
Yes. PixelRelay finds and connects to your paired device on your local network, so both devices need to be on the same Wi-Fi (or the same hotspot, including your phone's). The network does not need internet access for the app to work.
Every connection is encrypted with TLS. When you pair the two devices for the first time, your Mac locks onto your specific Pixel's certificate — from then on, it will refuse to connect to anything else claiming to be that phone. Pairing keys are stored in the macOS Keychain and the Android Keystore, both protected by the operating system's hardware-backed security.
Anything stored on your Pixel: photos (JPEG, HEIC, RAW, PNG, WebP), videos (including 4K), audio, documents, ZIPs, screen recordings, voice memos — whatever shows up in the file manager or photo gallery. Files are transferred in their original quality, untouched.
On Android, yes. PixelRelay uses a foreground service so a long transfer keeps running while your phone is locked or you're using another app. The Android system shows a persistent notification while transfers are active. On the Mac, the app needs to be open or in the dock for transfers to continue.
Only while you're actively transferring. PixelRelay is idle most of the time and only uses Wi-Fi when you're moving files. There's no constant background sync, no ongoing connection to a cloud service — nothing happening when you're not using the app.
The Mac app requires macOS 13 (Ventura) or later. The Android app requires Android 10 or later. Both apps are built natively for their platforms (SwiftUI on macOS, Jetpack Compose on Android).
The app is tuned for Pixel and we test on Pixel hardware, but the Android app runs on most modern Android 10+ devices. If you'd like official support for your phone, drop us a line at ApAppsCo@gmail.com.
Both devices forget each other immediately — pairing keys, certificates, and transfer history are removed on both sides. Files you've already transferred stay where they are; PixelRelay never deletes them. To pair again, you just scan a fresh QR code.
Email us at ApAppsCo@gmail.com for support, bug reports, or feature requests. We read everything and reply.
Support
I built PixelRelay because I got tired of emailing photos to myself just to get them off my Pixel and onto my Mac. If it saves you the same trouble, that's the goal. Support is optional but appreciated.
Supporting is completely optional and doesn't affect your app experience.
Mac App Store