Last November, Google announced that it had managed to make Apple’s AirDrop compatible with Quick Share on its Pixel 10 phones, allowing them to easily share photos and files with iPhones, iPads, and Macs. The feature was intuitive, and to quote my colleague Jake Peterson, it’s worked so seamlessly that it was almost like Quick Share and AirDrop “were built this way from the beginning.” But for other Android users, it continued to be business as usual, leading to awkward texts and emails to share files across iOS and Android. Now, though, Google confirmed it’s working to bring AirDrop to other Android phones, too, including phones it doesn’t make. At an event attended by Android Authority, Android Vice President of Engineering Eric Kay said, “Last year, we launched AirDrop interoperability. In 2026, we’re going to be expanding it to a lot more devices.”
To a degree, we kind of knew this was coming. While many Pixel only features are implemented via a special Pixel-only system component, Google added AirDrop compatibility to the Pixel 10 by upgrading Quick Share from a system level feature to a full-on app, with its own APK. That laid the groundwork for other Android phones to eventually get AirDrop compatibility of their own, since they can all use this app. For instance, Nothing CEO Carl Pei said in November that his team was “already exploring” adding AirDrop compatibility to Nothing phones, while chipmaker Qualcomm said it “can’t wait” for the feature to be enabled on Snapdragon—commonly used in Samsung’s Galaxy phones—in the “near future.”
Now, it seems like the wait for AirDrop across the rest of Android won’t be much longer. While Kay didn’t give an exact timeline beyond 2026, he did say that Google is already “working with our partners to expand it into the rest of the ecosystem, and you should see some exciting announcements very soon.” That’s it as far as official communication goes, but I’ve reached out to Google for additional comment and will update if I can snag more details. In the meantime, we do have a few possible dates where we could expect the feature to be announced.
The soonest might be the next Samsung Unpacked, where the company is expected to announce the S26 lineup of phones. According to rumors, that’ll take place on Feb. 25, and it’s not unusual for Google to make an appearance during Unpacked to discuss new features coming to Android that the new phones can take advantage of. Alternatively, Google might save the announcement for its next Google I/O event, which would likely be sometime in May. Or it could just drop the feature online without the fanfare of an official event.
What do you think so far?
Either way, I can’t wait. I take a lot of photos on my phone for this job, and while sending them from my personal iPhone to my work Mac usually isn’t an issue, getting them off an Android phone I might be reviewing can be a much bigger pain. As someone who’s got an Android tablet, an iPhone, a MacBook, and a Windows PC all within 5 feet of me right now, anything that helps bridge these ecosystems together is a good move in my book.
