I’m one of the weird people. I have a MacBook, iPad, Windows PC and both an Android as my daily driver phone. I even have an iPhone sitting on my desk for different scenarios. Basically, I’m platform-agnostic, which can be a double-edged sword.
Apple has never been great at letting others come to play with their toys. The result was making iOS a very sticky platform. By that, I mean; when you’re on iPhone, you stick with iPhone. But the times, they are a changing and one of the big swings has happened with Airdrop opening up to Android, starting with the Google Pixel Series.
What is Airdrop?
This might seem a simple question to be answering, but not everywhere is like the States where the vast majority of people use iPhone – so much so WhatsApp penetration is only ok because everyone uses Apple Messages and FaceTime. But it’s an important feature to make Android owners aware of.
Airdrop is a simple feature that lets you “magically” beam files and photos between iOS devices. In a world of large, high-quality video and photo files, it’s a handy feature. When you share these files over WhatsApp, they are often compressed and lose quality. Airdrop shares the original file, quickly and securely.
Better still, if you live in an Apple ecosystem with a MacBook, iPhone and iPad and find yourself creating quite a lot of content (like myself), the ability to flick files between your devices is very valuable.
Airdrop Alternatives
I’ll touch on the big news about Airdrop in just a second, but first I have to give a shout-out to LocalSend. I’ve been across different operating systems for a white now and I needed a solution to my Airdrop not working with Android problem. The answer was LocalSend. This is a free, open-source platform that replicated Airdrop functionality. I could easily share files between all of my aforementioned devices, regardless of platform.
Given the Airdrop to Android rollout is going to seemingly take time, LocalSend might still have a place in the tech world for some time to come.
Airdrop Lands on Android
Google has announced that they have developed a way for Android’s QuickShare functionality to work with Airdrop. QuickShare is, simply put, the same idea as Airdrop, but locked into Android’s world instead of Apple.
To use it, Apple users have to set their Airdrop setting to be visible to anyone
The launch is limited to the Google Pixel 10 series, adding to the ever-growing list of parallels between Google Pixel and Apple iPhone, perhaps the most obvious of which was Google launching a MagSafe equivalent in Pixel Snap.
Google claims that this has all been achieved with no collaboration with Apple, but I find this highly unlikely. Surely, joint conversations are happening between Apple and Google at this stage given the sharp increase in shared functionality. Oddly, this is two large companies potentially working together for the betterment of the consumer, that still leaves me feeling a little uneasy.
Regardless, Airdrop working with the Google Pixel 10 is a good thing. It’s been built to be secure and user-friendly across both Pixel 10 and iPhone. Unfortunately, there’s no detail on when or if this feature will come to other Android devices or even older Pixel devices.
