Wender CLI

Send files and folders between devices on your local network, from the command line.

Every download bundles its own Java runtime — there is nothing to install first.

This repository distributes the built CLI. The application source lives elsewhere and is not public.

Install

macOS (Apple Silicon)

brew install bartwell/tap/wender

Or download wender-<version>.dmg from Releases.

Windows

scoop bucket add bartwell https://github.com/bartwell/wender-cli
scoop install wender

Scoop is the smoother route: it strips the "downloaded from the internet" mark, so Windows does not warn about the program.

The .msi and the .zip from Releases work too, but they are not code-signed, so SmartScreen shows "Windows protected your PC". Choose More info → Run anyway, or unblock the file first:

Unblock-File .\wender-<version>.msi

Extracting the zip in Explorer does not avoid this: the mark is copied onto the extracted files.

Debian, Ubuntu, Raspberry Pi OS (64-bit)

curl -fsSL https://bartwell.github.io/wender-cli/apt/wender.gpg \
  | sudo tee /etc/apt/keyrings/wender.gpg > /dev/null

sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/wender.sources > /dev/null <<'EOF'
Types: deb
URIs: https://bartwell.github.io/wender-cli/apt
Suites: ./
Signed-By: /etc/apt/keyrings/wender.gpg
EOF

sudo apt update && sudo apt install wender

Covers amd64 and arm64, so 64-bit Raspberry Pi OS is included, and updates arrive with apt upgrade like any other package. The repository carries the current release only; older versions stay in Releases and install with sudo dpkg -i wender_<version>_<arch>.deb.

32-bit Raspberry Pi OS (armhf) is not supported. 64-bit has been the default since Bookworm.

Portable archive

Every platform also ships a plain archive, for machines where you would rather not install anything:

tar xzf wender-<version>-linux-x64.tar.gz
./wender-<version>/wender/bin/wender --help

On macOS the archive contains an app bundle, so the launcher is at wender-<version>/wender.app/Contents/MacOS/wender.

Verifying a download

Each release ships SHA256SUMS:

sha256sum -c SHA256SUMS --ignore-missing

Usage

wender send --to <ip> [--name <name>] <path>...   Send files or directories to a peer
wender receive [--out <dir>] [--name <name>]      Wait for an incoming transfer
wender discover [--timeout <seconds>]             List Wender devices on this network

Global options: --verbose prints library logs to stderr, plus --help and --version.

Example

On the receiving machine:

wender receive --out ~/Downloads

It prints the port it is listening on and waits. On the sending machine:

wender discover              # find the other device's address
wender send --to 192.168.0.42 report.pdf photos/

Directories are sent whole, and progress is shown while the transfer runs. Both commands exit non-zero if the transfer fails, so they compose in scripts.

Networking

Transfers use TCP port 2904, and discovery uses multicast on the same port. Two things commonly get in the way:

• A VPN. Multicast leaves through the tunnel interface instead of the LAN one, so discover silently finds nothing. Sending still works if you pass the address yourself with --to.
• A firewall. On Windows, allow wender.exe on private networks.

Guest and "client isolation" Wi-Fi networks block device-to-device traffic entirely; neither discovery nor transfer will work there.

Where data is kept

Transfer history goes to the per-user data directory: ~/.local/share/wender on Linux (honouring XDG_DATA_HOME), ~/Library/Application Support/Wender on macOS, %APPDATA%\Wender on Windows. Set WENDER_DATA_DIR to put it somewhere else.