Apple’s AirDrop feature debuted for Mac computers in 2011 and made its way to iPhones with iOS 7 in 2013. Since then, Apple users have easily shared files, photos, and more between devices. The feature has had its share of bumps, but that hasn’t stopped it from becoming a staple in the Cupertino tech giant’s walled garden. Early products like Android Beam and Nearby Share have been on Android phones for years, but none were as easy or fast as AirDrop.
In 2020, Samsung released Quick Share, which worked well if you lived in the South Korean company’s ecosystem or had friends with a Samsung device. However, Google merged Nearby Share with Quick Share in January 2024 and adopted the name. While this should be a good thing, as it brings consistency across the Android space, the feature lacks the polish of AirDrop and ease of use. This is likely why you haven’t heard of or used it.
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It shouldn’t be this complicated
Yet, here we are
Here’s a brief breakdown of AirDrop and its Android counterparts. Let’s say you want to digitize, edit, or view a piece of mail on your computer. Ideally, you take a photo of the document, tap Share on your phone, and choose Quick Share. You’ll see devices on your network that can receive your files. Tapping one sends that photo to your chosen device. You don’t have to send an email to open and download. It’s just there, and sometimes this works.
When the Quick Share feature works as it should, it can seem like magic. I use it to send the photos I take for articles to my HP Chromebase because it saves me time from opening the Photos app and downloading them. The process is less than smooth and frustrates me, and I often go the long way to get what I need. It’s even more frustrating when trying to use Quick Share with a Windows PC.
I think Google and its partners know the feature is bad. However, it isn’t a bad feature, but it doesn’t work well, and that’s the problem. Have you ever heard the phrase, “No internet is better than a slow internet?” This is like that. Something that should make your life easier shouldn’t be inconsistent or difficult to use. All that does is make more work and cause frustration. I’d rather not have the feature on my phone if it doesn’t work correctly. This is why I think the powers behind Quick Share know it’s bad. When was the last time you saw it advertised?
Quick Share works for me about 50% of the time when sending between two Android phones and ChromeOS devices, with less success when using it with Windows. Regardless of the settings I use or the network I’m on, I often don’t see the device to which I want to share. The connection fails before sending or fails during transmission. An education factor is missing from the equation, and I think this is because Quick Share isn’t shown off. When it gets used, people are confused, my wife included.
Will or should Quick Share get fixed?
Maybe, and yes, it should
I worry that Google put a bandage on its cross-device file-sharing product, Nearby Share, by merging with the better product in Samsung’s Quick Share. Because Google couldn’t figure out how to make the feature work on its own, it joined with Samsung, much like Samsung did with its smartwatches, going from the in-house Tizen OS to Google’s Wear OS. It seems like Google is content with changing the app’s name on phones from the old to the new and then leaving it alone.
While I would be happy with that choice given the simple functionality needed for this kind of app, I’d rather it not be tinkered with. Except in this case, the feature doesn’t work as it should and needs some work. Which company should be doing the work is another question. Is this a Samsung issue that needs some of the original exclusivity removed, or is it a general issue on the Android side? This part is unclear, and one of them needs to step up and fix these problems.
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LocalSend is the AirDrop and Quick Share replacement I’ve been dreaming of
A true cross-platform sharing solution
There are third-party alternatives, but you need the app for each device in the chain to use them. This creates a point of friction in a feature that should be simple. If you want to send a friend a file over one of these apps from the Play Store, like LocalSend, both of you need the app installed. The beauty of Quick Share is that every Android device has it.
To the cloud
Rather stay local
There are plenty of cloud storage options, like Google Drive, Dropbox, and others, but this creates another step and potential security issues with saving files on the internet. Plus, when you need to get a file or files between two devices, the last thing you want to do is wait for it to upload to the cloud and then download it on the other device. The ability to send a file directly and quickly between devices without the cloud shouldn’t be a dream.
It’s 2025, and Android users still don’t have a reliable option for a product Apple released nearly 14 years ago. When tech mega-giants like Google and Samsung work together, products like Quick Share should be an easy problem to solve. But considering it’s been over a year since the merger of the two companies’ products, it is still a mess, and maybe they don’t care.
