KonnectMac: a community-built native macOS KDE Connect client

Community
1

Hi everyone,

Long-time KDE Connect user here. I switched from Windows to Mac last year and the Mac side of the ecosystem has been a gap for me. The official Mac port (kdeconnect-kde for Mac) hasn’t seen meaningful updates in years and the third-party options are mostly Electron wrappers.

Rather than wait, I built KonnectMac, a native Swift implementation of the KDE Connect protocol (v7) for macOS. It pairs with the official Android app you’re all already using.

Repo: GitHub - aryarajsingh/KonnectMac: Native macOS KDE Connect client. Menu bar app, zero dependencies. Swift/AppKit/SwiftUI. · GitHub

This is explicitly third-party and not affiliated with KDE. I built it on top of the public protocol spec, GPL v3, with full credit to the upstream KDE Connect project.

Two questions for the community:

  1. Would it be appropriate to list this on KDEConnect - KDE Community Wiki as a known third-party client? I want to make sure Mac users can find it.

  2. If anyone here has worked on the protocol, I would value feedback on the implementation. There are a few packet types I would like to validate against the canonical Linux behavior.

Happy to discuss any concerns about a third-party implementation. The intent is to fill the Mac gap, not to fragment the ecosystem.

Thanks for KDE Connect. It has been a daily-use tool for me for years.

Aryaraj

4 Likes
2

Why not contribute to the official application?

3

I wanted something pretty, started as a personal project honestly, but became super stable with time. I wanted to build a native swift app.

4

You could make kdeconnect-ios prettier :wink:

As far as I understand, it’s also native swift?

5

It does, I just wanted to start from scratch.
Why don’t you try the app?

6

He’s a KDE developer, creating KDE applications and administering KDE servers. I’m not sure if he has free time for this and macOS device.

7

Just asking, it’s always nice to get KDE contributors :slight_smile:

I don’t have any mac devices myself, so I can’t try this myself