Synchronize the contacts of an Android smartphone with Linux

Is it possible to synchronize the contacts of an Android smartphone with Linux using KDE Connect?
And can you synchronize texts stored on the phone with Linux computers?

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Yes, it is possible :slight_smile: Checkout your ~/.local/share/kpeoplevcard folder, it probably would be a good idea to somehow expose this a big moreā€¦

You can then create a KAddressBook calendar pointing to one of the folder contained inside .local/share/kpeoplevcard

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Oh, that would be wonderful. Since my switch from Windows, I still use MyPhoneExplorer via Wine. I would love to run my Linux without any Windows programs at all.
So, you say this is possible?
Important to me would be the contacts, possibly also the calendar and especially the many texts, txt and some odt, docx and pdf that I have on my phone. Photos I could transfer manually to the computer if necessary.
But if all this would work, it would be like Christmas for me.
Where can I find instructions on how to do this?

Hallo @carl
Is it really possible to use kdeconnect to synchronize the contacts, maybe appointments and especially the data from the Android smartphone with the Linux PC? I would so like to replace the Windows software MyPhoneExplorer.

This is my question too! Especially for Thunderbird, which is the only Contacts App I need. There are Addons and all, but many also dont work in 115 anymoreā€¦

Yes, synchronization with Thunderbird would be great. Didnā€™t even dare to ask for something like that. (On Windows you could do it with MyPhoneExplorer).

A big request to all who work with KDEConnect:
Is it possible to synchronize contacts, calendars and especially data of the android cell phone with the computer? Is that possible?
I do not expect you to tell me how to do it, but only if.

I use DAVxāµ to synchronize my contacts and calendar with my Fastmail account. Thatā€™s one step removed from synchronizing it with my Linux desktop, but it should integrate in a similar way.

Android can maintain different address books & calendars, some synced, some not, and itā€™s possible to set the DAVx one as default. This will allow all of your address book & calendar data to be synchronized with a server.

You still need a server that can interact with DAVx, i.e. supports CardDAV for contacts and/or CalDAV for calendar entries. Fastmail supports both, I donā€™t know about your email provider. Even if your email provider doesnā€™t support it, you can use a different service for those.

On the KDE side, given that CardDAV and CalDAV are already the standard approach for address book & calendar synchronization, all that would be required is for your client software to use the same CalDAV/CardDAV server.

Files or in-app notes are a different story, and will require a different solution.

Iā€™ve configured Syncthing to expose my Android photo folder as shared folder, and on my Linux desktop I then get those photos to sync automatically, assuming both sides have Syncthing running at the same time. (I usually disable it to save battery.) This approach can work with any Android folder including for documents, music, etc.

KDE Connect in its current state is handy mostly for one-off manual transfers of files I can select, but Iā€™m not using it for ongoing synchronization tasks.

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Absolutely! I could see so many QoL use-cases for this. And it could really expand on the ā€˜Online Accountsā€™ section of System Settings, which now only defaults to Open Desktop, which is really useless, unless you also know thatā€™s where the KDE Store isā€¦Which how would a user ever know this (but I digress)ā€¦

As refined and awesome as KDE Connect already is, I think there could be a community agreed-upon ā€˜best practicesā€™ way of doing contact sync as well as other areas that could benefit.

Having thought about it a bit, I do realize that it would generally have to be assumed that the user is running Kontact, or at least using KAddressBook.

Maybe itā€™s a can of potential worms that no one really wants to touch :grin: - But I would argue that with the best solution today being using DAVxāµ, which if IIRC is a paid app, is less than idea (even though that app is great!)

Itā€™s actually open source, they charge for it on Google Play like Krita charges on the Microsoft Store. But if you use F-Droid (I use it via Foxy Droid app) then you can install it for free, even without personally building it from source.

Good to know! I forgot it was open source. I had no problem paying for it.

good idea! The problem is, that your PC would not be a traditional server. So you would need to re-establish a connection in DAVx5 often, maybe too often, it would require a change in the app for like a dynamically changing sync target.

But davx5 is probably the best point to start, as it works great.