is a senior reviewer with over a decade of experience writing about consumer tech. She has a special interest in mobile photography and telecom. Previously, she worked at DPReview.
It’s pretty rare when a cool new gadget feature gets announced that you can try right away on your own devices. But that’s exactly what happened yesterday when, out of the blue, Google announced it had engineered a way to bring AirDrop interoperability to Pixel 10 phones — all without Apple’s involvement.
After the news dropped, an update started rolling out that enabled the feature, arriving first for the 10 Pro and 10 Pro XL, which I have on hand. And once I got past some initial snags, it’s been nothing but a joy just AirDropping shit left and right — to iPads, MacBooks, iPhones, it’s all working. It’s beautiful.
Let’s hope we get to keep it.
Once the news broke, I set about updating everything on my Pixel 10 Pro that could be updated in an effort to get it to work. When that didn’t get it up and running, I had the good sense to read Mishaal Rahman’s how-to for Android Authority, which steered me toward a Play Store listing for the system app I needed to install. My first and most consequential use case: getting a picture of a receipt from the Pixel phone to my work MacBook, something I have to do at least once a month. If I happen to be on iOS, that’s easy — I just AirDrop it. When I’m on Android, I use a work-around like Slacking myself, or, god forbid, putting it somewhere in Google Drive and praying I can find it on the other side. Is our national nightmare finally, kind of, over?
My heart sank when my first attempts to AirDrop from the Pixel to the MacBook failed, but I restarted the laptop, and it’s been working without a problem ever since. Note to self: consider restarting your computer more than once a fiscal quarter. I AirDropped myself a receipt for tacos. A video of my kid dancing at a bowling alley. A screen recording of me AirDropping a receipt to the computer. It all worked. AirDropping from the laptop to the phone works, too.
I am unstoppable.
AirDropping from the Pixel 10 Pro continues to work with other Apple devices, even those running developer betas or older OS versions. An iPad running iPadOS 18.6.2? Works fine. An iPhone 17 Pro running iOS 26.1 developer beta? Works. (I know, I’m updating all of these devices tonight, don’t yell at me.)
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1 / 2 Sending files over AirDrop on Android uses the Quick Share interface.
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