How to Send a Whole Folder Between Devices

You picked a project folder to send to a coworker, and the tool you’re using only lets you select one file at a time. So now you’re zipping it, waiting for the zip to compress, uploading that zip somewhere, and hoping the person on the other end remembers to unzip it in the right place. All you wanted to do was send a folder between devices — the structure, the subfolders, the file names, exactly as it sits on your drive.

This is a common snag because most transfer tools were built around single files, not folders. Here’s why that happens, and how to send a whole folder — structure and all — without the zip-and-upload detour.

Why sending a folder is harder than it should be

Most file-sharing tools treat “a file” as the basic unit. That works fine for a photo or a PDF, but it breaks down the moment you have a folder with nested subfolders, mixed file types, or dozens of items you’d rather not click one by one.

A few common workarounds, and why they’re annoying:

Zip it first. You compress the folder, transfer the zip, then the recipient has to extract it — and remember where. If you forgot a file after zipping, you start over.
Cloud drives. Google Drive, Dropbox, and similar services can sync a folder, but that means uploading the whole thing to a server first, waiting for it to sync, then having the other person download it. That’s two hops instead of one, plus you’re depending on your upload speed and their download speed to a third party.
Pick files one by one. Some transfer apps don’t support folders at all — you’re stuck selecting files individually and losing the original directory layout when they land on the other device.

None of these are terrible in isolation, but together they turn a two-minute task into a ten-minute one, especially for large or deeply nested folders like a code repository or a photo library organized by year and month.

What actually happens when you send a folder between devices with Likz Drop

Likz Drop sends the whole folder — or a batch of files and folders together — in one action, and the structure comes out the other side exactly as it went in. There’s no intermediate zip file created on your disk and no upload to a server first.

Under the hood, it sends a small manifest describing the folder’s file names and directory layout, followed by each file as its own encrypted stream. The receiving device reconstructs the folder from that manifest as the files arrive. That’s the whole trick: no temporary archive to create or unpack, and nothing sits on a cloud server in between.

A few things that fall out of that design:

No size cap on direct transfers, so a folder full of raw photos or video clips isn’t a problem the way it can be with email attachments or free-tier cloud upload limits.
Works over local Wi-Fi at local-network speed when both devices are on the same network — no round trip to the internet and back.
Works fully offline between Android and iPhone too, using Bluetooth to find the other device and a local hotspot to move the data, with no internet connection and no cable required.
End-to-end encrypted the whole way (ChaCha20-Poly1305), whether you’re on the same Wi-Fi or falling back to the encrypted relay for devices on separate networks — and that relay only forwards already-encrypted bytes, it never decrypts or stores your files.
Cross-platform: Windows, macOS, iOS, and Android (Linux coming soon), so the folder you send from a Windows desktop opens correctly on a Mac or a phone.

Step-by-step: sending a folder with Likz Drop

Open Likz Drop on the sending device. No account is required to start — you get a temporary display name and can start immediately.
Choose “Send” and select a folder (or select multiple files/folders together) instead of a single file.
Pick the recipient. If they’re on the same Wi-Fi network, Likz Drop finds them automatically as a nearby device. If you’re offline on iOS/Android, it discovers the other device over Bluetooth and switches to a local hotspot. If you’re on different networks entirely, it routes through the encrypted relay instead.
Confirm the transfer on the receiving device.
Wait for it to finish. The folder rebuilds itself with the same subfolders and file names on the other end — nothing to unzip, nothing to re-sort.

That’s it. The same flow works whether the folder has 5 files or 5,000.

Use cases where sending a whole folder matters

Project folders. Handing off a client project, a design source folder, or a set of contracts where the subfolder structure (drafts, final, assets) needs to stay intact.
Photo libraries. Moving a whole album or a year’s worth of photos to a new phone or a laptop without re-uploading everything to iCloud or Google Photos first.
Code and repositories. Sending a local project folder — including nested directories like src/ and assets/ — to a teammate’s machine without pushing to a remote repo first, useful for quick handoffs or offline pairing.
Media collections. Sending a folder of raw video footage or a music library between a Mac and a Windows PC without hitting a cloud upload cap.

How it compares to other ways of sending a folder

Method	Sends folders as-is	Needs zipping	Needs a cloud upload	Size limits
Likz Drop	Yes	No	No	None on direct transfers
AirDrop	Apple devices only	No	No	Practical limits vary
Cloud drive (Drive, Dropbox)	Yes, via sync	No	Yes	Free-tier caps
Email attachment	No, files only	Usually	Sometimes	Small (MBs)

If you already read about sending large files without the cloud, the same logic applies here — folders are just the multi-file version of that problem, and skipping the cloud hop saves the same upload/download round trip.

FAQ

Can I send a folder with subfolders and have the structure preserved? Yes. Likz Drop sends a manifest describing the folder layout along with each file, so the recipient’s device rebuilds the same subfolder structure automatically — you don’t need to zip it first.

Is there a size limit on the folder I can send? No artificial size cap applies to direct transfers over local Wi-Fi or the offline hotspot path. Very large folders (photo libraries, video projects) are fine.

Do I need to zip the folder before sending it? No. Zipping is one of the workarounds this feature is meant to replace. Likz Drop transfers the folder directly as a manifest plus per-file streams, with no temporary archive created.

Does sending a folder use the cloud? No. Files go directly between devices over local Wi-Fi, or through an encrypted relay when devices are on separate networks. The relay only passes along encrypted bytes and does not decrypt live payloads or keep them as downloadable cloud files.

Can I send a folder between different platforms, like Windows to iPhone? Yes. Likz Drop supports Windows, macOS, iOS, and Android (Linux coming soon), so a folder sent from one platform lands correctly on any of the others.

What if the two devices aren’t on the same Wi-Fi network? If they’re on different networks, Likz Drop falls back to an encrypted relay automatically. If you’re sending between Android and iPhone with no internet at all, it uses Bluetooth discovery plus a local hotspot instead.

Send your next folder without the zip file

If you’re tired of compressing folders just to move them between your own devices — or between yours and a coworker’s — download Likz Drop and send the whole thing directly, structure intact, no cloud upload required. It’s free to start, no account required to start. For details on the optional Pro plan, see pricing. And if your next transfer is device-to-device over the same network rather than across the internet, this guide on transferring files between computers over Wi-Fi walks through that setup too.

Next step: Download Likz Drop · Across networks