Google just announced some unexpected and welcome news: Pixel 10 owners can now send and receive files with Apple devices over AirDrop. According to Google, this works with iPhone, iPad, and macOS devices, and applies to the entire Pixel 10 series. It’s limited to Google’s latest phones for now, but Google spokesperson Alex Moriconi says, “We’re bringing this new experience to Pixel 10 first before expanding to other devices.”
In order to send a file from a Pixel 10 phone over AirDrop, the owner of the Apple device will need to change their settings to make their device discoverable to anyone — there’s an option to do this with an automatic limit of 10 minutes. Then, the Pixel 10 owner should be able to see the device using Quick Share and send it. On the other side, it seems that it’ll look just like any other AirDrop request that the user can approve to start the transfer.
According to support documentation, it goes the other way, too. Likewise, the Pixel 10 device will need to be discoverable to anyone or in receive mode. Then the Apple device owner starts an AirDrop transfer, the Pixel owner accepts, and voila: cross-platform sharing.
A post on Google’s security blog goes into greater detail about how it’s implemented, claiming “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.”
What it doesn’t say, however, is that it was added with any involvement from Apple — only that “we welcome the opportunity to work with Apple to enable ‘Contacts Only’ mode in the future.” The blog post details Google’s reasoning for why this implementation is secure, along with mentioning an independent security assessment from NetSPI (pdf), preemptively pushing back on reasons Apple might cite to block compatibility. We’ve reached out to Apple for comment on this announcement, and will update if we hear anything.
Notably, this isn’t an Android feature yet — it’s currently limited to Google’s own phones, and the latest generation at that. Still, it’s kind of huge news for Android users. Seamless sharing between Apple devices with AirDrop is one of those extremely helpful features that’s been kept inside the walled garden until now. With RCS now widely in use on iPhones, making cross-platform messaging easier, it seems like another meaningful step forward to lowering those garden walls.
