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Pushbullet is a service that lets you easily send files, links, notes, lists, etc. to your Android or iOS device from your desktop or the other way around. It can be used via Chrome / Firefox extensions and for Windows there's also a desktop app.


Because there was no Pushbullet application for Ubuntu, Lorenzo from atareao.es (you may already know some of his work: My Weather Indicator, Calendar Indicator, Touchpad Indicator, Nautilus/Nemo image tools, etc.) has created a Pushbullet AppIndicator for Ubuntu.

According to Lorenzo's article, Pushbullet Indicator should work properly not only with Unity, but also with the KDE, LXDE and Xfce Ubuntu flavors.

This is the first Pushbullet Indicator release and not all the Pushbullet functionality is implemented.

Right now, Pushbullet Indicator supports sending notes, links, files, lists and addresses from your desktop to your Android or iOS device but it currently doesn't work the other way around: you can't push anything from your mobile device to your desktop (unless you have the Pushbullet Firefox or Chrome extensions installed, obviously). 

Another Pushbullet feature that's not yet supported in the indicator is displaying Android notifications on your desktop (the API doesn't allow this yet).

Update 16 July, 2014: Pushbullet Indicator now supports OAuth, notification mirroring from Android devices to your desktop and sending files from mobile devices to the desktop.


Install Pushbullet Indicator in Ubuntu 16.04 or 14.04


Pushbullet Indicator is available in the Atareao PPA for Ubuntu 14.04 or 16.04. To add the PPA and install Pushbullet Indicator, use the following commands:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:atareao/atareao
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install pushbullet-indicator


How to setup and use Pushbullet Indicator


1. Create a Pushbullet account, install the Pushbullet iOS / Android application (you can find the Android / iOS app links at the bottom of the Pushbullet main page) and setup Pushbullet on your mobile device - login, etc.

2. Start the PushBullet Indicator ap, authenticate it with Pushbullet and enter a name for your device.

If you want the indicator to start automatically when you log in, enable "Autostart" from its preferences (here you can also set the indicator icon to light/dark).

Then click OK.

That's it, you can now start using Pushbullet. To send a file/text/link/etc. from Ubuntu to your Android or iOS device using Pushbullet Indicator, select the device from the indicator menu, then click the appropriate tab: message, link, file, list or address:


... and finally enter what you'd like to send and click OK.