This Is Google’s Version of AirDrop for Android
- Mehedi Hassan
- Jan 24, 2020
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Google was rumored to be working on its own version of AirDrop for Android back in July of last year. At the time, the feature was internally known as Fast Share. Google has now renamed the feature to Nearby Sharing, and the folks at XDADevelopers got an early look at it.
In fact, they have released a new video showing off the Nearby Sharing feature in-action on Android 10. The feature is very much like AirDrop and allows you to quickly share photos/videos, and other files between devices without using the internet.
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Here’s the demo:
The video shows off Nearby Sharing letting the user share photos quickly between devices, but it didn’t seem to work for video sharing. That’s probably a bug for now as Google is yet to release the feature to the public.
Nearby Sharing is actually integrated into Google Play Services — in other words, it won’t only be limited to Pixel devices. In fact, XDADevelopers were able to get the feature working on a OnePlus 7T Pro, too.
What is interesting, however, is when we first reported about Fast Share (aka Nearby Sharing), the feature was rumored to work with iPhones as well, but that doesn’t seem to be the case — at least for now, anyway.
AirDrop-like features are quickly becoming popular across most devices. Windows 10 had a feature called Nearby Sharing for a while, Samsung is working on its own version called Quick Share, while others like Xiaomi, Oppo, and Vivo are teaming up for their own offerings. It almost seems like someone should build a standard feature that works across all devices and operating systems. After all, if your friend has an iPhone and you can’t share a file with them from your Android, the inability to seamlessly share files will continue to be a problem.