AirDrop Now Works on Android
If you and your friends have iPhones, you can use AirDrop to send photos and files. If you all have Androids, you can use Quick Share. But if you have both platforms, file sharing suddenly becomes less straightforward. You can send photos via email, but there’s a data cap, dammit. You can send them via text message, but if your friend doesn’t have RCS , the videos will look terrible. You can use a cross-platform chat app, but don’t expect to agree on which one to use. If only AirDrop were available on Android and Quick Share on iOS.
On Thursday at The Keyword, Google made history: Quick Share now works with AirDrop, at least starting with the Pixel 10. If you or a friend has one of Google’s latest smartphones, you can wirelessly transfer files to another platform as if they were yours.
Currently, sharing files between iPhone and Android (and vice versa) feels intuitive. On Android, you can open Quick Share, select “Send to Nearby Devices,” and a compatible iPhone will appear among all compatible Android devices. On iOS, opening AirDrop will show a compatible Pixel 10 in the list of available devices. It feels like these features were designed this way from the start. (They should have been.)
The only limitation: the recipient’s iPhone must be set to ” Everyone for 10 Minutes .” If the iPhone is set to “Contacts Only,” this feature doesn’t currently work. Google says it’s open to collaborating with Apple to expand this feature, but for now, you can’t leave AirDrop open to just your contacts if those contacts are on a Pixel.
It’s a shame this new cross-platform functionality is limited to the Pixel 10 series, but hopefully it will expand to other Android platforms over time. While iOS and Android aren’t always the most convenient operating systems for working together, Apple and Google have made significant strides in recent years. Now that iPhones support RCS and some Android devices support AirDrop, we’re closing the gap between these two once diametrically opposed platforms.