Wi-Fi file transfer

Wi-Fi is not a file protocol. It is the radio. On that radio you still run HTTPS, SMB, SFTP, or a vendor discovery protocol. People say "send it over Wi-Fi" and mean any of those.

Local and internet paths behave differently. Two laptops on the same access point can copy at the rate the radio and the disk allow, and the bytes need not leave the building. A phone uploading to a cloud bucket over Wi-Fi still crosses the up link after the access point. The Wi-Fi hop can be fast while the building's up commit is 20 Mbps. Blaming Wi-Fi for that upload is blaming the wrong segment.

A photographer copies 40 GB of RAW files from a laptop to a studio NAS on a 5 GHz access point. The transfer holds near 300 Mbps and finishes in about 18 minutes. The same folder "sent over Wi-Fi" to a client portal then crawls, because the portal path leaves through a 40 Mbps up link. A second failure is isolation: guest Wi-Fi that blocks client-to-client traffic breaks AirDrop-style and SMB copies while internet uploads still work. The radio is up. The peers cannot see each other. Captive portals add a third break. The device associates, then HTTP redirects until someone taps accept, and background uploads fail with no file error.

Wi-Fi file transfer is not Bluetooth and not a cellular upload. Those are other radios. It is not safer because it is local. An open access point still exposes an unencrypted file protocol. Use the same TLS or SSH you would use on a wired port.