omdrop-owl: two-way AirDrop with iPhone on a Framework 13 Linux laptop via OWL, with Wi-Fi staying connected

Core Background & Industry Pain Points

AirDrop runs on Apple's proprietary AWDL radio protocol, so non-Apple devices could not swap files with iPhones directly. TU Darmstadt's Seemoo Lab open-sourced OpenDrop and OWL in 2019, doing the original reverse engineering, but they typically needed an extra Atheros USB adapter, and the author himself says OpenDrop "hasn't worked for years." On 2026-10-09 developer t4t5 released omdrop-owl, getting two-way AirDrop with an iPhone on a Framework 13's built-in Wi-Fi. The post's "fully reverse-engineered" overstates it: this builds on OpenDrop/OWL and adds engineering integration.

Architecture Highlights & Internals

omdrop-owl is a radio backend for the Omarchy plugin omdrop, which previously required Broadcom Wi-Fi on Apple Silicon Macs; it now runs on the MediaTek MT7925 (mt7925e). AWDL shares the access point's channel: OWL (from an MT7921-oriented fork plus two patches) runs on a monitor interface with -S intersect, using only the iPhone's slots on that channel and sending from the station's MAC, so Wi-Fi stays connected. Per-card settings live in owl-profiles, and new cards can be added by PR after testing. The matching omdrop PR #25 was still open at ingest.

Authoritative Benchmarks & Measured Scores

All figures are the author's README self-tests, not independent: on the MT7925, start is usable in under 2 s and stop takes about 2 s; receive ~1.3 MB/s, send ~490 kB/s, because injected frames leave at a fixed pace of about one every 2.5 ms. Limits: the AP must be on channel 6, 44 or 149, and the station can stop receiving 3–165 s after the monitor interface is removed, so it forces a reconnect. At ingest the repo had 416 stars and 24 forks (GitHub API).

Developer Hands-on Guide

1. Only the Framework 13 (MT7925) is tested; other cards need /etc/omdrop/allow-untested and self-testing. 2. On Arch, run makepkg -si; it conflicts with the Broadcom brcmfmac-awdl-dkms backend. 3. Move your AP to channel 6/44/149, then run omdrop-discoverable probe. 4. The repo declares no license yet, so check before redistributing or commercial use.