Nobody in the tech world thought this would be possible: iPhone owners can AirDrop files to Pixel 10 devices. You read that right: Quick Share now works with AirDrop, although there is a caveat. The engineering team at Google has made this particular interoperability possible. Google says it works with iPhone, iPad and macOS devices, and applies to the entire Pixel 10 series.
AirDrop versus Quick Share
In case you are not familiar with AirDrop, here’s a short explainer. In the Apple ecosystem, you can share files from one device to another using AirDrop. It is one of the reasons why people in the Apple universe stick to Apple products: Sharing becomes seamless and fast. Android has something called Quick Share, and until now you couldn’t share files from, say, Pixel phones seamlessly with iPhones.
AirDrop has been around since 2011, debuting on Macs. AirDropping files is faster because the sender doesn’t have to find the recipient’s contact information. It also works both online and offline because the feature uses various transfer methods, including Bluetooth or peer-to-peer Wi-Fi connections.
It took time for Android to come up with Nearby Share, which also lets people quickly send files to the devices of people around them. Google spent “years in development” before releasing it in 2020. Before that, Google had released a similar feature called Android Beam, but it failed to gain traction. The world then got Quick Share, a wireless peer-to-peer data transfer utility for Android, Windows and ChromeOS. It uses Bluetooth and Wi-Fi Direct to send files to nearby devices, but it can also send to any other device anywhere using Samsung Cloud by uploading the files to a web address. Originally developed by Samsung Electronics, Google later collaborated with Samsung and merged its own Nearby Share into Quick Share in 2024.
Here’s how it works
You will need a Pixel 10 device running on the latest version of Android. To access AirDrop on iPhone, go into Settings and tap on your name at the top. From there, you will find the option ‘All Services’. Scroll down to ‘System Services’. Next, find ‘Quick Share Extension’. You may need to update the Quick Share Extension — it takes only a few seconds. Once updated, you should be able to use AirDrop.
But I ran into a speedbreaker: the AirDrop option on the iPhone did not show up when I tried to share files. It required a restart of the Pixel device. After that, it worked.
Now, on your iPhone or Mac, visit Settings > General > AirDrop. Make sure it’s enabled for ‘Everyone for 10 Minutes’. You can do this on any Apple device.
Choose a picture on your Pixel phone, tap on Share and then ‘Quick Share’. It should show the nearby iPhone or any Mac device that’s around. Tap on it and accept the file on your Apple device. Files transfer exactly as they would when sharing within Apple devices.
What about receiving a file from an Apple device to a Pixel 10 phone? Swipe down to access Quick Settings on your Pixel 10. Tap on Quick Share and set it to Receive. Move back to the iPhone and share a file. It works just as you’d expect.
What next?
In a technical document, Google said the feature has been enabled without compromising security: “This feature is strengthened by the robust built-in security of both Android and iOS. On Android, security is built in at every layer. Our deep investment in Rust at the OS level hardens the foundation, while proactive defences like Google Play Protect work to keep your device safe. This is complemented by the security architecture of iOS that provides its own strong safeguards that mitigate malicious files and exploitation. These overlapping protections on both platforms work in concert with the secure connection to provide comprehensive safety for your data when you share or receive.”
Apple hasn’t commented on what Google has achieved, and nobody is sure whether Apple will find a way to stop the feature from working.
At the moment, the biggest caveat is that you must have a Pixel 10 device. Second, iPhone users need to switch AirDrop to the ‘Everyone for 10 Minutes’ mode instead of ‘Contacts Only’. Google says this is a direct peer-to-peer connection: Your data isn’t routed through a server, shared content isn’t logged, and no extra data is shared.