Home » Guide »  What Is Wi-Fi Direct? A Faster Way To Transfer Files In 2022

 What Is Wi-Fi Direct? A Faster Way To Transfer Files In 2022

Being able to transfer files wirelessly has become more common over the years. The advancement in technology has reached a stage where things that are possible today would have gotten people hanged 400 years ago.

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Bluetooth has been one of the most popular ways through which people transfer files from one device to another and the software has been around for over two decades. Another way people sent files to other devices is through NFC. However, the downside of these has to do with the speed at which they transferred files. Bluetooth can be slow for transferring huge-size files such as videos. If you are looking to transfer files from your mobile device to your computer easily, you can use Wi-Fi Direct instead of Bluetooth. Today, we will take a look at what Wi-Fi direct is and how it works. 

  • What is Wi-Fi direct?

This is a peer-to-peer technology that is wireless and allows you to connect your smartphone to your computer without a shared public network. In some way, Wi-Fi direct can be seen as a form of Bluetooth or an improvement of Bluetooth. It uses the same ‘discover and send’ mode of operation just as Bluetooth does. However, in this case, the files are sent using wireless networking. This means that the speed at which you can transfer your files is much faster. Wi-Fi direct could replace Bluetooth shortly since it does not have any problem transferring large-sized files within short periods. However, the Wi-Fi direct feature is not as universal as Bluetooth is at the moment and some devices do not fully support it as of now. However, if you are having the windows 10 operating system on your computer, you can make good use of this feature in transferring files between your computer and your mobile devices. 

  • How Wi-Fi direct works

If you want to use this feature, you will need to have one of your devices be compatible with the protocols of the feature. You will then be able to seamlessly transfer files from one device to the other. When you have been able to establish a Wi-Fi direct connection between the two devices, one of the devices will act as the access point that the other device will connect to. All these processes are done automatically and you would not need to worry yourself about it.

The Wi-Fi direct feature is built on the Wi-Fi software and the only difference between them is that normal Wi-Fi will need a router to allow you to connect to the internet while Wi-Fi will not need any such thing. The main purpose of Wi-Fi direct is to allow you to create communication between two devices. Its purpose is not to allow you access to the internet.

Wi-Fi direct is much faster than Bluetooth. This means that you can share large files within short periods. So although Bluetooth still works well and can transfer files, it is not ideal when you need to transfer bigger files quickly and that is where Wi-Fi direct come to your aid.

  • Where to use Wi-Fi direct

Due to how fast it can be due to its wireless peer-to-peer technology, the feature can be used almost anywhere that Bluetooth can be used. Wi-Fi Direct has a speed of up to 250Mbps. You can make use of Wi-Fi direct in the following places:

  1. Transferring multimedia files
  2. Playing mobile games
  3. Connecting external devices like keyboard
  • How to know if your windows 10 machine is compatible with Wi-Fi direct

Before you can use Wi-Fi direct, you would first need to make sure that it is compatible with your Windows 10 machine. This can be done by using the command prompt feature. Here is how to go about it.

  1. Go to the start menu
  2. Got to the search bar and type in ‘cmd’ and press enter
  3. After opening the command prompt, type in ‘ipconfig/all’ and press enter
  4. If the machine has Wi-Fi direct, you would see an entry labeled as ‘Microsoft Wi-Fi Direct Virtual Adapter’
  • How to use Wi-Fi Direct to transfer files

Before you can use this feature, you would need a third-party app to make it happen. You can use an app like Feem to do this. After you have downloaded Feem, please follow the steps below.

  1. Turn your smartphone into a mobile hotspot by going to settings, network and internet, and hotspot and tethering. You can also pull down the notification panel and select the hotspot option from there.
  2. Now connect your computer to this network
  3. Now, open the Feem app on your smartphone and your computer. You will see that both devices have been given some names along with a password. Take note of the password because you will need it.
  4. Transfer a file from your android device to the computer with the software by choosing the destination and then clicking on ‘send file

You will see that the file has been sent to your computer. You can use this Feem app on both Windows and Mac devices.

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