Holy Sh*t, Google Made Android Play Nice With iPhone’s AirDrop

I want you to brace yourself, because, despite what I’m about to tell you, the world (to my knowledge) is not ending. Are you ready? Okay… Google made Android and Apple’s AirDrop play nice with each other. Deep breaths, everyone.

In a blog post from Google, the company said Quick Share, the Android equivalent of AirDrop, can now send files via Bluetooth to an iPhone just like it can between two Android devices. The same goes the other way, too; iOS users can now AirDrop to Android devices by discovering the device as they normally would on their iPhones. They both just… work now.

There is one slight catch at this juncture in time, and that’s the fact that only Google Pixel 10 owners have this ability for the time being. Google says it plans to bring the functionality to other Android devices in the future—that is, if Apple doesn’t have a total meltdown first.

As reported by The Verge, to make matters even more intriguing, Google says that this sudden interoperability was not done in concert with Apple. Rather, Google went ahead and cracked this code all on its own, through “its own implementation,” adding that its security process has been vetted by a third party. Given the lack of cooperation, there’s a definitive chance that all of this will come crashing down. Trust me, I’ve seen how these iOS workarounds go (looking at you, Nothing Chats), and they’re not as simple as they’re made to sound.

Nothing CEO Carl Pei, which makes phones like the Nothing Phone 3 and Phone 3a Lite, said on X his company is “already exploring how to bring this to Nothing phones as soon as we can.”

If you’re curious how this all works in action, here’s a video demonstration from Google below, and Google also has official support documentation of how the process happens here. From what I can tell through the documentation and the video, it looks about as intuitive as it gets. For the record, we weren’t able to get the feature to work at Gizmodo, but folks over at Bloomberg seem to have had more success.

Sharing moments shouldn’t depend on the phone you have. Starting today with the Pixel 10 family, Quick Share now works with AirDrop, making secure file transfers between Android phones and iPhones more seamless. This builds on our commitment to cross-OS compatibility to bridge… pic.twitter.com/iNdZfjCYQ7

— Android (@Android) November 20, 2025

It’s been a slow process, but Apple’s walled garden is definitely a lot more scalable than it used to be. First, there was RCS support, which allowed certain feature interoperability between iOS and Android, like tapbacks, read receipts, and better picture/video messaging and group chats. That process, which was actually sanctioned by Apple, was a long time coming and was more a product of external pressure on Apple to make iOS more friendly with other ecosystems, or, to put it another way, less anti-competitive. Additionally, there was the whole European Union forcing Apple to adopt USB-C thing, which… thank god.

While better functionality between AirDrop and Quick Share doesn’t appear to have been the product of the same pressure, there’s a chance that it could still stick, given the fact that regulators seem to be more acutely aware of potential anti-competitiveness. In the event that Apple puts its foot down, would Google appeal its case? I don’t know, maybe. Or maybe Apple won’t even try, knowing full well it’s lost similar battles in recent years.

For now, all we have is speculation and a little hope. Maybe our mobile computing just actually, for real, and for good, got a little bit easier.