Owldrop

the drop box for your Tailnet
v0.10.0

For your Tailnet

One always-on drop box
for the whole household.

Leave Owldrop running on the desktop in the tray, or on the NAS. Phones, laptops, Tailscale's own apps, and anyone with a drop link all send into that box. Auto-save to a folder. No more tailscale file get . — and it works on the tagged servers Taildrop itself cannot target.

Download → See what it does

Requires a running Tailscale install — the app talks to your local tailscaled.

Features

What you get

A receive node that stays up, plus the things the CLI can't do — notifications, history, a phone scratchpad, and links anyone can send to.

Instant inbox

Files sent to you appear the moment they arrive, with size, progress and one-click Save, Save to… or Delete.

Send in one move

Pick a device, a file, or drag & drop on the window. Send to one device or several at once. Paste an image or text and Ctrl+V to send it.

Auto-save

One checkbox and every incoming file lands in your folder the moment it arrives — like tailscale file get --loop, with a notification.

Full history

Everything is logged locally: arrivals, saves (with the path), deletes and sends. Search, filter, re-open a saved file, export as JSON.

Native & quiet

Tray quick-send, OS notifications even when hidden, a configurable global shortcut (Ctrl+Alt+O by default), and close-to-tray instead of surprise quits.

Drop links

Create a short-lived link anyone can open in a browser — no Tailscale account needed — to send a file straight into this box.

Sync scratchpad

Paste a URL or drop a screenshot from your phone's browser, pick it up on the desktop. Not OS clipboard sync — a shared scratchpad while there is no mobile app.

Tagged NAS / Unraid

Tailscale will not Taildrop to tagged devices. Install Owldrop on that box with the host Tailscale socket and receive via drop links, LAN, or HTTPS. (A tsnet-only container has no Taildrop inbox — UI, Sync, and Funnel drop links still work.)

Free & open source

Public drops are free

Public access costs nothing and runs on your own machine: flip on Public access (Funnel) in the app and it runs tailscale funnel itself, exposing only the public https://<you>.ts.net/drop/… pages to anyone on the internet — the app and its session token are never reachable, and files go straight from the sender to you with no third-party server in between.

MIT licensed, free forever. If Owldrop saves you time, a coffee keeps the owl fed.

Download

Download & install

Pick your platform. Releases are signed against SHA-256 digests in the update manifest.

Your platform
Linux NixOS · x86_64

Install with one command — the binary is wrapped against WebKitGTK 6.0 so it just runs, and updates with nix profile upgrade owldrop-install.

nix profile install github:Rastavich/owldrop-install
Your platform
Linux Debian / Ubuntu / Fedora / RHEL

.deb / .rpm for Ubuntu 24.10+, Debian 13+, Fedora 40+ (WebKitGTK 6.0).

Download .deb Download .rpm
Your platform
macOS .zip · Universal

Apple Silicon and Intel in one download. Unzip and drag to /Applications.

Download for macOS

Ad-hoc signed — macOS may show a Gatekeeper warning; right-click → Open once.

Your platform
Windows .exe · amd64

A single portable executable — download, run, done. It self-updates from the project's update channel, so you don't need to come back for new versions.

Download for Windows

Everything above is served from the public install repository — github.com/Rastavich/owldrop-install — which CI republishes on every release. Source is also there if you want to build it yourself.