Some background: https://www.ditto.com/blog/cross-platform-p2p-wi-fi-how-the-...
On the Apple side, this was prompted by the EU Digital Markets Act: https://digital-markets-act.ec.europa.eu/questions-and-answe...
That might also explain the limited Pixel 10 rollout, if it required a specific WiFi chipset/firmware.
[1] https://www.netspi.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/google-fea...
> Close-range wireless file transfers: this feature allows to access the same iOS-controlled features as Apple’s services in third-party file sharing apps, creating, for example, alternatives to AirDrop.
As you can read here (https://www.ditto.com/blog/cross-platform-p2p-wi-fi-how-the-...):
> Under pressure from the EU’s Digital Markets Act (DMA), Apple is being forced to ditch its proprietary peer-to-peer Wi-Fi protocol – Apple Wireless Direct Link (AWDL) – in favor of the industry-standard Wi-Fi Aware, also known as Neighbor Awareness Networking (NAN). A quietly published EU interoperability roadmap mandates Apple support Wi-Fi Aware 4.0 in iOS 19 and v5.0,1 thereafter, essentially forcing AWDL into retirement. This post investigates how we got here (from Wi-Fi Direct to AWDL to Wi-Fi Aware), what makes Wi-Fi Aware technically superior, and why this shift unlocks true cross-platform peer-to-peer connectivity for developers.
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.
Google acquired it and immediately killed it.
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.
Sounds like a Nikon mirrorless. I have a Z6iii, and I am constantly confused with the networking setup. There are something like three duplicated menus, all with very similar functionality.
- send a file to their phone
- charge their phone if they visit me [1] (without a huge bag of accessories)
- send them money [2] (without them giving some weird company their banking details)
- pay them [3] (even if they are from a neighboring country)
What will they think of next?! And to think, some of these things even work in the US. What a time to be alive.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_Equipment_Directive_(202...
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Bank_Account_Num...
>AirDrop also shares your full name (seemingly the one associated with your Apple ID, not what you have set for yourself in your contacts), both by displaying it in the sharing interface on the involved devices and by attaching it as an extended attribute to uploaded files.
>So if you AirDrop some files to your computer and 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 to go with them.
Linked article from that thread is moved to https://medium.com/@kieczkowska/introduction-to-airdrop-fore... (but is archived).
I wonder if Google is adding metadata as well. Otherwise there does seem to be the problem of, for example, threats being AirDropped in a public place.
It was a fun misunderstanding to resolve when I went to pick up my repaired Macbook Pro and they expected my ID to say Mark Suckerberg. It was resolved relatively uneventfully but still had to get the manager over.
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.
I don't think it would be at all surprising to find that the vast majority of people use their legal name or something closely associated with their identity, and that it persists over multiple devices.
At this breakneck speed of technological development, one can only imagine what wonderful boons await consumers in the next few decades.
This is why we need more scrutiny against big tech. Interop and platform openess.
So what's better than this?
- sharing files between two phones
- printing a page on that printer over there
- getting the projector to display my screen (correctly, or at all)
- getting my wife not to click on a link in a random email
I've been using Quick Share to send files between different makes of Android phone for ages. This is entirely on Apple.
There is nothing "amazing" there, just big tech trying to lock you up in their ecosystem and make your use of "other" devices as difficult as it can be.
And of course deny it along the way.
This is something that should be normal but I’m still amazed every time I use it because I had an Epson before and the experience was… not the same.
Mopria pretty much universally fixes printing on all competent printers by smoothing over the rough edges of IPP.
Hot take: MUAs should simply not make links clickable/copyable on render, or even strip any URI away completely.
Then I assume they'll roll it out further
For better or worse, I do own Pixel 10
https://security.googleblog.com/2025/11/android-quick-share-...
Also `we welcome the opportunity to work with Apple to enable “Contacts Only” mode in the future` doesn't make it sound like Apple actually helped implement this
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.
Neither Apple nor Google is doing anything revolutionary with their silicon for such a standard compute task. It's really mostly minor tuning to get a more optimal part instead of an off-the-shelf chip catering to other uses too, with die area and power consumption "wasted" in your setup.
We used to be able to send files over Bluetooth before the iPhone came out.
Apple likes to have far more control than that.
Now "bluetooth" I could buy (and I do not miss at all).
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 know that read/write conflict concerns are what got USB Mass Storage mode removed from Android, but surely there's some way to resolve that. Like it wouldn't bother me a bit if Android just locked the device and put it in "file transfer mode" when it's mounted on a computer, similar to how iPods used to and how Kobo e-readers do now. It'd be worth the universal robust multi-platform support.
Cross platforms, really? So for example between a Blackberry and a Windows CE phone?
Yes, it was part of the Bluetooth file transfer spec[0] and possible between any two devices that implemented it correctly.
0: https://www.bluetooth.com/specifications/specs/file-transfer...
My mom was upset that she would lose her photos, so I puzzled over it for a long time trying to figure out a way. Finally, I realized I was being stupid and missing the obvious: both phones had Bluetooth! I paired them with each other, dug through Razr menus, selected the photos, and did a Bluetooth file send. As expected, the photos went right over. Well, I shouldn't say right over because it was very slow, but it worked just as it should.
This was just as broadband was getting popular, so those who had it usually downloaded MP3s and then distributed them at school through Bluetooth. I remember one friend using her phone as a bridge to copy files from me using Bluetooth and sending to another friend's phone using IR.
This was across all the classroom, this definitely wasn't restricted to the nerdy clique. We found out that chatting through notes exchange worked pretty well and then it spread like wildfire. SMSes were expensive in my country!
This was like 20 years ago. Maybe 2006-2007. Twenty years later we're commemorating that Bluetooth File Exchange over WiFi is now interoperable between the only two major mobile OS as if it were a revolutionary technology. How backwards it is.
kind of worked with flip-phone resolutions, but tiresome with multi-megabyte pictures of today
On the other hand, with the ubiquity of always-on Internet access and cheap data plans, in most situations where Bluetooth would have been used, I now see WhatsApp being used instead.
Here is a more hilarious attempt to break Vendor lock from the 90s!: https://youtu.be/TcJBXgmdX44?t=98
Things were more fun back then. Now Google vs Apple is so BORING! :D
I doubt this was done for the DMA.
> 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.
Google is going hard after iPhone users by trying to punch holes in Apple's walled garden anytime they can. AirDrop is another hole in the wall, as was Magsafe, and RCS.
If Google can get other AWDL features working between macOS and Android, particularly universal clipboard and universal control, I'd seriously consider switching back to Android after many, many years on iOS purely for the ecosystem integration. iMessage doesn't bother me, but I use AirDrop, AirPods auto switching on calls, and universal clipboard daily and those are all blockers for my considering a switch.
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-...
There is a different article with a comment by google here:
https://www.theverge.com/news/825228/iphone-airdrop-android-...
> Update, November 20th: Added a quote from a Google spokesperson confirming that Apple was not involved in the development of this feature.
The old days of being able to AirDrop something to everyone on a plane because it was set to "everyone" by default are over.
I am really ashamed by how wrong I was and how WE allowed things to became so artificially limited.
The comment got deleted shortly after, but I like the idea of someone actually trying to send data from computer to phone, failing, and settling on this method
[1] https://w1.fi/cgit/hostap/tree/wpa_supplicant/README-NAN-USD
If we had a functional government every major tech CEO would get called by congress, grilled about this bullshit, and told to sort it out unless they want to get some bullshit legislation shoved down their throat.
And that's the frustrating part of using Apple. When it works, it works great. When it doesn't work, you have zero visibility into what's happening or what went wrong, and no tools to debug. It's just a magic black box and you are SOL.
Another easy example of use case is wanting to share a file during a flight or while being overseas on a boat.
Could also use it to play media - so a phone or tablet could act as a remote control from anywhere in wifi reach, and play music on the main TV screen / speakers or on the local device.
Was pretty cool, but didnt have the funds to commercialize it.
I don't like how android's local share system seems to need to be tied to a google account to work, and from some limited research earlier it won't work without play services installed.
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.
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.
Is the Android equivalent any better?
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.
Especially when receiving a file, it makes no sense to start by going into settings.
If you're not close, telegram fork allow easy sharing of files too.
3 decades later, hooray, now we can share files between Android and iPhone!
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.
Given this, I think there's minimal risk of it sending files over the internet.
https://support.apple.com/en-us/102430
You don't realize how much you needed this until you use it a few times.
Unfortunately, due to privacy restrictions on modern versions of both iOS and Android, updating the shared clipboard with things copied from the phone has to be done manually....
--
Read with sarcasm
...still relevant
/s
The almost universal solution is "should have gotten Apple."
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.
