AirDropping With Android
Google today announced a new cross-platform feature that allows for file sharing between iPhone and Android users. With AirDrop on the iPhone and QuickShare on Pixel 10 devices, there is a new file transfer function available.
The file sharing option works on Apple devices that include iPhone, iPad, and Mac, along with the Pixel 10, Pixel 10 Pro, Pixel 10 Pro XL, and Pixel 10 Fold.
It’s currently only available on the Pixel 10 family, though Google says it is “expanding it to more Android devices.” It also requires you to set your AirDrop visibility to “Everyone for 10 minutes”, as it presumably has no visibility into your contacts.
Interestingly, there’s no indication that Apple did anything to make this possible. The provisions of the Digital Markets Act in the European Union do currently stipulate that Apple will have to allow for competing standards to AirDrop (which might very well include the Android Quick Share feature that Google is leveraging here) as well as bring interoperability to the feature.
Inexplicably, it is not working in either direction on my personal devices, but I have seen people do it successfully, so I’ll chock this up to first day weirdness.
“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,” Google explained in a blog post.
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The feature does not use a workaround, and the connection is direct and peer-to-peer, Google says. This means that data isn’t routed through a server and that shared content is never logged.
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It’s worth noting that Google’s blog post doesn’t detail anything about how it worked with Apple to launch the new functionality.
Typically, Apple and Google work together on cross-platform features, but it turns out that Apple had no involvement this time. Google created the Quick Share to AirDrop interoperability on its own, and apparently sprung it on Apple with a public announcement. From a statement Google provided to Android Authority:
We accomplished this through our own implementation. 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.
What this means for the feature long term we’ll have to see. Will this be another Beeper situation?
While it initially seemed like this was a rogue move made by Google to coerce Apple into another boundary-breaking decision, it might actually be part of the repercussions that also led to USB-C on iPhone and the adoption of RCS.
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As reported by Ars Technica, the answer to this week’s mysterious Quick Share upgrade lies in the EU’s interoperability requirements designed for the DMA. The ruling out of the European Commission pushed Apple to begin supporting interoperable wireless standards beginning with this year’s set of OS upgrades, replacing the previous proprietary standard the company used to power its various Continuity features. That forced Apple to add support for the Wi-Fi Alliance’s Wi-Fi Aware standard of multi-directional file sharing, at the cost of completely phasing out its previous walled-in protocol.
Previously:
- Apple Appeals EU Digital Markets Act Interoperability Rules
- Moving Targets
- Transferring Google Photos
- Apple Blocks Beeper Mini
- Transferring iCloud Photos
