I was experimenting with this technology almost a decade ago as part of my work as interaction designer:

https://darker.ink/writings/Mobile-design-with-device-to-dev...

It has a lot of potential but unfortunately it has been kept back until now by lack of support and interoperability.

This is great! I notice that’s on the ditto blog. I can see why the ditto developers are watching with keen eyes!

I have a modern digital camera complete with wifi and bluetooth. There’s an app that lets me connect the camera to my iPhone for monitoring, remote shooting and copying photos. Very useful! But right now the only way for the camera to connect to my phone is through some super complicated song and dance, involving my phone requesting a connection over Bluetooth, then the camera running a wifi access point that my phone connects to (during which time my phone disconnects from my home wifi). It’ll be wonderful when my camera can use wifi aware instead, and this can all happen instantly, without permission prompts and without booting me off wifi in the process.

Is it actually? Apple supports AirDrop over Wi-Fi Aware? Any source or confirmation?

Pretty sure that ditto article is written by AI ... there's an entire section dedicated to the imagined 5.0 spec..

It's interesting that apple released 3rd party Wi-Fi Aware SDK for iOS and iPadOS but no for MacOS...

Thank you for the pro-consumer regulation, EU.

Using macOS 26 and iOS 26 I was unable to reproduce their findings. I airdropped a photo from my iOS device to my laptop, and nothing in `mdls`, `xattr -l`, `exiftool -s`, `rg -i` showed my name.

Just a tip - You can put any string as your name for your Apple ID. you can also change it at any time. I have it as Mac Book. It's not checked when making any credit card payment, AFAIK.

"... then zip them up, anyone you send that zip to (a journalist, a public file-hosting site, w/e) will have your full legal name ..."

A bit of a leap to assume that your Apple ID (or the name you give your iphone) is your full legal name ... or related to any name at all ...

My apple ID is built specifically for just that phone and is jettisoned when I upgrade/change the phone. The apple ID is not related to my own name.

I don't consider this an aggressive - or even interesting - privacy practice.

Did you use your full legal name when you signed up with Blizzard for WoW ? Why would you do anything different for Apple ?

They are not the IRS. They are not a passport agency. They are not the government. Stop treating them that way.

LocalSend requires the devices to be on the same local network. TFA is about file sharing using a direct device-to-device wireless connection.

I prefer https://pairdrop.net/ ; nicer interface

It's slow as suffering in hell.

Not the same.

I think specifically latest Pixels are often Google's beta testers. The enthusiasts owning them are happy to get features first and won't complain too much if it's rough around the edges. The phone is also not big enough revenue driver for them to be afraid that too many people would abandon it due to buggy new features

Then I assume they'll roll it out further

For better or worse, I do own Pixel 10

It says starting with pixel 10, so I assume itll roll out to the others after some time

https://security.googleblog.com/2025/11/android-quick-share-...

The answer to your 2nd question might be Google's custom silicon: https://blog.google/products/pixel/tensor-g5-pixel-10/

The answer to your first question may simply be they want to sell more Pixel 10 phones.

The investment into custom silicon is more likely to pay off when new and exiting features are exclusive to the newer platform.

That's just how they roll out features these days, in about 6 months it'll be on every Pixel and in about a year or so on every Android.

Yay if you pay additional fee you will maybe get Bluetooth file sending to PC

We get the early worm. At the same time, as a screenreader user, I wished that I didn't miss the responsiveness and ease of use of my old Samsung Galaxy S9+. I fail to comprehend how Google managed to make a phone which is harder to use than something produced 7 generations ago.

We've reached the point where a program that simply links file selection dialog APIs with network identity broadcast and file transfer APIs is so difficult to get working, that you can't expect it to be functional without the exact specified hardware and software version it was written for.

I'd be surprised if it did, there's no technical reason to require those. Also, SafetyNet is deprecated in favor of Play Integrity, so you're not likely to see the former in any new apps/services.

Ever since the iphone apple has been trying to make you believe files aren't a thing.

Looks like this is an Apple problem that can ve solved by not using Apple products. Every once in a while I look at some Apple device and think it's nifty. Shortly after I'm made aware of some thing or other that they can't do because Apple just doesn't like standards, open source, or just freedom itself.

It's really an embarrassment to our society that it took this long. And still only by seemingly by reverse engineering with no cooperation from Apple.

> We used to be able to send files over Bluetooth before the iPhone came out.

Cross platforms, really? So for example between a Blackberry and a Windows CE phone?

And even via IR port.

You can still send files over bluetooth on devices that aren't iPhones. Even Macs support this

I miss being able to plug my phone (of any kind) in and getting it mounted as a drive letter.

Android misses the mark so much with MTP and iPhone… waves frantically at iTunes.

(At least, in a weird bizarre twist, the iPhone’s Files app is actually really useful for me. I find myself formatting flash drives, copying stuff from network shares, etc, all from my phone and it’s so nifty to have nearly-first-class features there.)

I remember reading somewhere Apple had/has to make AirDrop interoperable due to EU's DMA.

I was wondering the same. Looking at the statements in the posts, I think so?

Reading between the lines, it seems like Google is playing a bit of chess here. Reminds me of the Beeper Mini stunt, except this time by a trillion-dollar company they can't just sweep under the rug.

> we welcome the opportunity to work with Apple to enable “Contacts Only” mode in the future.

> I applaud the effort to open more secure information sharing between platforms and encourage Google and Apple to work together more on this.

Your move, Apple.

Key quote from The Verge article:

When we asked Google whether it developed this feature with or without Apple’s involvement, Moriconi confirmed it was not a collab. “We accomplished this through our own implementation,” he tells The Verge. “Our implementation was thoroughly vetted by our own privacy and security teams, and we also engaged a third party security firm to pentest the solution.” Google didn’t exactly answer our question when we asked how the company anticipated Apple responding to the development; Moriconi only says that “…we always welcome collaboration opportunities to address interoperability issues between iOS and Android.”

https://www.theverge.com/news/825228/iphone-airdrop-android-...

And if Google does this as well as the RCS rollout, I can look forward to attempts to use AirDrop to send me viruses and other spammy junk.

There's a gif on the blog showing file sharing in both directions. Apparently "Contacts only" sharing doesn't work yet, as mentioned in another comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45995586

The video shows both directions.

I came to the same conclusion when I clicked the link to try it out, just watching the video now to verify that the flow is both ways.

The demo shows it working both ways, so you're in luck

In high school (2003-2007) it was super easy for any of my friends and I (varying technical levels) to send arbitrarily large files to each other with AOL Instant Messenger's Direct Connect. Honestly not even sure how a non-technical person would do that nowadays.

You might enjoy this new initiative: https://aol.codeberg.page/eci/

They have a shiny file system abstraction, but ever since they introduced that, they have allowed downloading arbitrary files into it AFAIK.

That’s more or less how iMessage works when you send a file. It encrypts the file on your device, uploads it to iCloud, and then sends a link and the decryption key as an iMessage (so it’s E2EE) to the recipient.

I am with you. How is it that in the past we got major successes like TCP/IP, 802.3, HTTP and WiFi but somehow in the past decade big tech decided that was too much collaboration and it would be better for everyone to stop doing that?

Seriously this should be a thing. Would be so much easier.

Around 1.0, I would say.

0, this is reverse engineered AirDrop protocol. Implementations have been around for a while, eg: https://github.com/seemoo-lab/opendrop

AirDrop uses P2P wifi for the actual transfer which can make it significantly faster than transferring through the internet, which makes a big difference for photos, videos, and other large files. It also works out in the middle of a forest where there are no wireless connections as well as it works in the middle of NYC.

I used them. Compression is an issue in other protocols (sending via WhatsApp, for example). Another benefit is that photos sent by Airdrop get automatically backed up. It also works well in areas with poor internet connectivity. For example, some beaches have weak cellphone signals due to their surroundings, so when meeting friends, we generally use Airdrop.

I AirDrop files between my different Apple devices pretty regularly.. I guess everyone has their own system for doing things.

You can add it to the quick settings tiles in the notification shade, they show that exact flow in the blog post.

Generally, you don't have to open settings. The the built-in share menu from a file has quick share as an option and if someone shares something with you, you'd get a notification.

I was never able to make it work, for some reason.

not supported right now, but seems they might be able to make it work in the future

https://security.googleblog.com/2025/11/android-quick-share-...

To ensure a seamless experience for both Android and iOS users, Quick Share currently works with AirDrop's "Everyone for 10 minutes" mode. This feature does not use a workaround; the connection is direct and peer-to-peer, meaning your data is never routed through a server, shared content is never logged, and no extra data is shared. As with "Everyone for 10 minutes" mode on any device when you’re sharing between non-contacts, you can ensure you're sharing with the right person by confirming their device name on your screen with them in person.

This implementation using "Everyone for 10 minutes” mode is just the first step in seamless cross-platform sharing, and we welcome the opportunity to work with Apple to enable “Contacts Only” mode in the future.

That would probably require cooperation with Apple.

The contact-only mode is authenticated using an Apple-signed device certificate and a signed record of those contact identifiers (as hashed UUIDs) that have been registered for a particular Apple ID associated with the device.

Someone with a Mac can extract those from the keychain (the people behind OpenDrop have a tool to do this), but otherwise you'd need to register a new apple ID, get Apple to register the contact information, register a device of some sort and then do all the key exchanges.

but I have to download and app which is the same as downloading Google drive

Curious, why do you think AirDrop is so bad?

As for Android, it works fine, but I’ve probably used that feature only once in the past ten years. I haven't seen others use it either.

One thing I like about Android Quick Send is that you can generate a QR code, that the other person scans, and it'll send the file to them. I use it so rarely, and most people I know are the same, so usually it's just turned off and I find a lot of other Android users are the same.

Airdrop is great when it works.

What does this have to do with System 7?

Operating systems have always used their own filesystems, and it persists to this day.

The only obvious exceptions that come to mind are iso9660 as a standard for CDs, and people generally go out of their way to use FAT/FAT32/whatever on USB keys and SD cards for compatibility with cameras or whatever device they're plugging the card into. But the latter is a choice users actively make to ensure the FS is compatible with the device, rather than a default.

System 7 had built in tools to read and write DOS disks: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_File_Exchange

LocalSend requires devices to be on the same local network, which this doesn’t, it establishes a direct Wi-Fi connection.

Because it can't be implemented without low level hardware access. But also, it seems like it's a part of GMS, not of the OS itself.

100% of the time when I want to share a file from my phone to another phone, the other phone is not owned by me and I can’t just install some software on it

Granted, this is an edge case: I'm a musician. I use an Android tablet for sheet music. That's great when I have WiFi access, otherwise, file transfer is hard. Not impossible, but awkward when show time is in 5 minutes and someone has brought some brought some new material that they want the band to play.

The almost universal solution is "should have gotten Apple."

AirDrop is cool because it works offline with relatively high bandwidth using local RF. If you want to wait for you and the target to transmit all the data to/from some server 1000 miles away (using up your precious bandwidth quota along the way) that’s always been an option.

Of course, only because Apple and Google did everything in their power to prevent people sending files directly between devices. When you have a duopoly that splits the population in two parts and they can't send files between them, of course users will rely on messaging apps to share stuff.

Short story: I did a long trip across two continent with my wife. Me with an Android devices, her on iOS. We did backup our photos in our own private cloud but guess how we had to quick exchange photos while in the wild (no wifi and sometimes no network)? We couldn't. Because Google and Apple did everything so we couldn't.

Google wants to your data and fought for the cloud. Apple don't want Android users to easily partake in some data exchange with iOS users (you gotta buy your ticket to their jail). So sad you don't realize how backward that is.

Besides what others have mentioned, it's also nice for moving files between your own devices - I use AirDrop all the time for transferring files between my iPad and Mac.

Yes, because it's almost the only cross-platform way to do it. It used to be email, then pictures become almost too big to fit into attachments (and bandwidth, think about the days of 3G) and messages have less friction anyway.

Large files.

That's my first thought too, as an Android user. But Apple culture is about using what's built in, the path of least resistance, and Android/Windows are more for tinkerers who seek out their favorite solutions from a wide variety of third party options.