winawdl 0.2.0

The first winawdl you can install without building it: AirDrop on Windows through the PC's own Realtek RTL8852CE, receiving and sending, with an app over both.

It is marked as a pre-release because it is research code. Everything in it has run on one PC, with one card, against one iPhone.

Before you install

Read Before you run it first. In short:

• It works with one Wi-Fi card only, the Realtek RTL8852CE (PCI\VEN_10EC&DEV_C852). The installer stops, having changed nothing, on a PC without it.
• Installing gives that card to winawdl's driver. Wi-Fi is down from then until you uninstall, so the PC needs another way onto the network.
• The driver is signed on your PC, with a certificate the installer makes there and adds to the PC's trusted roots and trusted publishers. It then deletes that certificate's private key.

Install

1. Download winawdl-0.2.0-windows-x64.zip below and unpack it anywhere.
2. Double-click install.cmd. Windows asks for administrator rights, then the installer lists what it will change and waits for your answer.
3. Start winawdl from the Start Menu and turn its Radio switch on. Windows asks for administrator rights again, for the radio.

The installer needs the .NET Desktop Runtime 10, Python 3.10 or newer and the Visual C++ runtime, and offers to fetch what is missing with winget. install.ps1 -DryRun says what would be done and changes nothing. To take it off again, use "Installed apps" in Settings or uninstall.cmd in C:\Program Files\winawdl.

On an iPhone, iPad or Mac, set AirDrop to "Everyone for 10 Minutes".

SHA-256 of the zip: DA650182AE9BCBB90A716FACDB5440623867A0B912628B99A01B6902AC4CD7DF

What changed since 0.1.0

• An installer, described above.
• The app runs from an installed folder. It finds the daemons beside itself, keeps their logs in C:\ProgramData\winawdl\logs, and makes the certificate the receiver and sender present, so OpenSSL is no longer needed.
• A device is listed once. An iPhone that announced itself under a second name was shown twice for up to 20 s, or for as long as a transfer to it ran.
• A Live Photo is one photo among what was received, and can play its video. It is still stored as two files, a still and a video.
• A device that will not answer this PC is said to be there, with what to change on it.
• An icon.
• Nothing built says who built it: the account's name is kept out of the programs.

What has been tried

• The installer ran in full on the PC it was made on. The installed app then received a Live Photo from an iPhone and sent it a file.
• The two fixes above were tried over the air the same day: a 6.4 MB Live Photo in and a 0.7 MB file out.
• Without a radio: 83 tests of the AirDrop layer over loopback, and 51 and 59 checks of the app, the second set on its real window kept off screen. The first two run on GitHub on every push.

What has not

• the installer never ran on any other PC.
• Fetching a missing prerequisite with winget.
• Very large transfers through the app.
• After many days without a reboot the radio can fail to find the memory it needs. Trying again a minute later worked once; a reboot always has.

Not in it: Contacts Only in either direction, and any card but the RTL8852CE.