Google just made history today, knocking down another wall between mobile platforms as it enabled easy Android-to-iOS file sharing by building AirDrop compatibility into Android Quick Share . It’s not just a huge quality-of-life improvement for Android users, but also a not-insignificant technological achievement as we learn that Google achieved this feat without Apple’s help .
How exactly did it pull that off? Well, Google breaks down the security that’s behind its implementation, and there it explains that this is all possible because of AirDrop’s “Everyone for 10 Minutes” mode.
Apple built AirDrop to support two main receiving modes: “Everyone for 10 Minutes,” which you have to enable each time you’re expecting a file (and obviously, only remains active for 10 minutes), and “Contacts Only,” which allows known senders to initiate transfers whenever they want.
Nah. Apple's got more important things to care about than what Android's up to.
Maybe, and it will depend on how Apple users react to the news.
Yes, but it will frame it as a "security upgrade" that just happens to break Android support.
Of course. Apple still hasn't outgrown its "doesn't play well with others" phase.
That latter option sounds much more convenient for regular use, and while Google hasn’t shared the full details publicly, it sure sounds like there are technical limitations that prevented it from initially supporting Contacts Only:
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.
That phrasing sure sounds like the ball’s in Apple’s court, and we imagine this could require secure signing, access to Apple servers, or details of the protocol that Google wasn’t able to reverse engineer.