I ran into a problem: I needed to get an APK onto my Smart TV, and I didn’t have a USB stick around. So, I figured out a pretty neat (if I do say so myself) way to do it. Basically, I used a PHP built-in server and downloaded the APK through the TV’s browser. Here’s how it works…

First of all you need PHP installed.

Then, connect your PC to the same Wi-Fi network as your smartphone/TV. And find your PC’s IP address in this network

As you can see here 127.0.0.1 is common loop-back address and 192.168.100.111 is address that we’re looking for

Now you need to create a folder, and put files that you want to share there, eg

• hello-world.txt
• test.apk

Then navigate to this folder and run PHP built-in server like

(!) Avoid this on untrusted networks (like cafes), as anyone could access your shared files through your web server. Or at least use some random port instead of 80.

After that you will see that the server has started

And now you just need to go to your TV and navigate to this address by using your IP address and file name, eg

• http://192.168.100.111/hello-world.txt
• http://192.168.100.111/test.apk

When you visit this links for the APK files the download dialog should appear and for the text document you will see something like this

If you face some issues check the window where you run your web server, it will contain the logs

And to stop your server just interrupt it with Ctrl+C or close the window.

And that’s all, very quick and simple.