What is proximity sharing?
Local sharing means that you send a file from one mobile phone (or tablet or computer) to another without going through the Internet.
The typical example is that you took a picture together with a friend and want to share it with you. Ideally, you should then only be able to choose share on the picture, find the other person’s device and press send.
What is proximity sharing?
Local sharing means that you send a file from one mobile phone (or tablet or computer) to another without going through the Internet.
The typical example is that you took a picture together with a friend and want to share it with you. Ideally, you should then only be able to choose share on the picture, find the other person’s device and press send.
There are, of course, many other ways to send a picture from one person to another. For example, you can use a chat service such as Whatsapp or SMS, but then the image is often reduced in resolution. If you email it or share with cloud storage, it may take a while for it to arrive, and in all these cases you need a good internet connection. With Proximity Sharing, only the two devices connect wirelessly to each other.
What is Airdrop?
Airdrop is Apple’s nearby sharing technology.
It has been around for a long time, in 2011 it came in its first version. The technology uses both bluetooth and wifi for the connection, and both must therefore be switched on. Bluetooth Low Energy is used to find the device that will receive the image or file. Then the devices connect with a direct wifi link between the devices and the file is transferred. The NFC chip, the one used to blip payments with Apple Pay, is also on a corner, you can use it to start a file sharing by holding two mobiles together. It has also made it possible to use mobile data for transfer, but then it is no longer close sharing because the file goes via the Internet. It all happens with network protocols that Apple created themselves rather than with any open standard, which means that until recently it only worked between iPhones, iPads and Mac computers.
What is Quick Share?
Quick Share, or Snabbdelning, is now Google’s technology for close sharing, but from the beginning it was Samsung’s variant, which came in 2020 and worked between Samsung mobiles.
Google had its own technology called Nearby Share. In 2024, Google and Samsung merged their technologies, and nowadays Quick sghare is part of the Android standard.
Quick share works according to the same principle as Airdrop, that is, you use Bluetooth Low Energy to find and pair with the person you want to send a file to, then Wi-Fi is used for the transfer itself. However, the protocols used look different, and so until recently Quick Share was not compatible with Airdrop. In some mobile phones, Samsung has also made it possible to use UWB to transfer the file. UWB stands for Ultra Wideband, and means using a wide radio spectrum with very high capacity but short range. For file transfer, UWB allows larger files to be transferred faster than with a Wi-Fi connection.
Quick Share is now available in most Android mobiles, and works between Android mobiles, Chromebooks and Windows PCs.
Are there other proximity sharing techniques?
Several other mobile phone manufacturers have developed their own proximity sharing techniques.
An example is Xiaomi’s Mi Share, which is based on the same principle with Bluetooth and Wifi. Xiaomi’s technology is compatible with several other Chinese manufacturers, such as Oppo, and probably differs more in user interface than function from Quick Share. With Quick Share becoming widely available in Android, it is now also available in Xiaomi’s phones, but they continue to offer Mi Share as an option in the mobile phone. The other mobile manufacturers’ alternative solutions are thus fading away in favor of Google’s standard.
Localsend is a third-party solution based on Open Source. Localsend requires you to install their app to be able to use the technology, but in return it exists and works between both iPhone and Android, Mac, PC and Linux computers. Localsend also has a reputation for being better at finding the device you want to send to when it’s about to connect.
Do the different proximity sharing techniques work together?
Airdrop and Quick Share have begun to be able to talk to each other, but so far only a few mobiles can communicate across system boundaries.
In November 2025, Google began rolling out support for transferring files to Airdrop with Quick Share to its Pixel 10 phones. The function has since also come to the Pixel 9, except the Pixel 9a. Samsung has also started to roll out the function to, among other things, the Samsung Galaxy S22 to S26, but in some cases the function is seen without working.
The reason why the rollout is seemingly happening one mobile at a time is believed to be that several different parts of the system need to be updated, it is not enough for Google to just update the Quick share app.
Why is this happening now?
It is with Ios 26 that it has become possible for Android mobiles to connect to Airdrop.
It is the EU legislation Digital Markets Act, which forced Apple to open up Airdrop to other manufacturers. Among other things, the law aims to prevent an electronics manufacturer from locking its users into a system with non-standard network technology. Since Airdrop uses Wifi, it is just such a technology that is affected by the law.
Apple has previously objected to the requirement, claiming that it poses a security risk for iPhone users to allow Android mobile phones to connect to them in this way, and that sensitive user information could be leaked. There was even talk that Apple would turn off Airdrop in European iPhones. The EU, on the other hand, has fine-tuned its requirements following feedback from Apple, and apparently managed to resolve the whole thing technically in a way that Apple found acceptable.
Problems with proximity sharing
There are a number of obstacles that make it difficult for nearby sharing to live up to its promise of smooth file transfer.
The idea of close sharing is that it should be easy, Apple’s idea with Airdrop is that you should just blip over a picture as you do with a payment.
The biggest problem is security. If it becomes too easy to transfer files, malicious people can transfer files to your mobile without you even noticing. The layers of security that should protect against it have gradually made the technology more complicated to use. In one of the latest system updates, Apple introduced a pin code when transferring files via airdrop to increase security.
Close sharing also has a tendency to mess up. When you have chosen to share a file, you should bring up the recipient in a list of nearby devices. It is not uncommon for it to take time to appear, and sometimes it does not appear at all. In turn, it may be due to handling errors, that the person you are sending to has not made himself visible in the right way, which can be difficult to determine.
It works best if you use it regularly to send between pairs of trusted devices, such as your phone and computer or tablet, or close friends. If you have set it so that you can always find devices in your contact list, it will be easier to find the device you want to transfer to.