Airdrop rarely works

[tiger2]

I can count on one hand the number of times airdrop has worked for me.

Between iPhone 6 and 6+
Between iPhone 6 and MacBook Pro
Between iPhone 6+ and MacBook Pro
Between all of the above and iPad Air 2

It works one out of 20+ times. All devices are on the same network. Airdrop set to contacts only, but if I try everyone it still rarely works. Bluetooth is on.

Very frustrating.

Anything I may be missing as far as setup?

Thanks!

 

[adamhenry]

There are several links for troubleshooting Airdrop. Here is a pretty good one:
http://www.macworld.co.uk/how-to/ma...rdrop-on-macs-wirelessly-share-files-3500407/

 

[I7guy]

I can count on one hand the number of times airdrop has worked for me.

Between iPhone 6 and 6+
Between iPhone 6 and MacBook Pro
Between iPhone 6+ and MacBook Pro
Between all of the above and iPad Air 2

It works one out of 20+ times. All devices are on the same network. Airdrop set to contacts only, but if I try everyone it still rarely works. Bluetooth is on.

Very frustrating.

Anything I may be missing as far as setup?

Thanks!

When I airdrop I have the target set the contacts to everyone. It rarely does not work for me. Once or twice I had to reboot both phones, but usually works on the first attempt.

 

[Abazigal]

I will say it works about 50% of the time for me. Which is irritating, because the time spent troubleshooting it when it fails could be time spent, say, emailing the photos to myself directly.

 

[Hermes Monster]

I have the same issue with iPhone to iPhone, very rarely works and if it does it takes so long that I could have just emailed or iMessage'd them.

It's shame, because it's really an excellent feature, but one that I've pretty much given up on

By the way, mac to mac (when I had two) always worked seemlessly - uh

 

[Will22]

I am the same between my iPhone 6 and iPad Air 2 and even asked in the Apple Store where I was told that it will get improved in iOS9 which going by the people I have dealt with in the Solihull Apple Store is just a cop out. The word genius is not what I would use to describe them, more like muppets.

Of course there would be no need for AirDrop if they let us just use Bluetooth.

 

[gsmornot]

I find it to be very good. I use it here between my devices and kids devices. It sends photos and videos at full resolution versus sending as a message and its fast. I do have to set the receiver to all contacts but past that I get a send failure maybe 1 out of 10 or less and when that happens I just hit cancel and send again and its gone. I have other issues with iOS (bluetooth in the car) but this feature works fine for me.

 

[FSMBP]

It's very disheartening that Apple can't get this to "just work". I've literally sent someone a picture with AirDrop and then 3 minutes later tried to send another & it didn't even find the person (same exact conditions). So like everyone else, I just end using iMessage.

 

[perkedel]

I have the same issue with iPhone to iPhone, very rarely works and if it does it takes so long that I could have just emailed or iMessage'd them.

It's shame, because it's really an excellent feature, but one that I've pretty much given up on

By the way, mac to mac (when I had two) always worked seemlessly - uh

I agree, I've had my ip6+ to another 5s, or 5, or another 6 / 6+, it's not 100% reliable, lot of times when airdrop is already enabled for everyone. I don't know what the conditions needed, bluetooth/wifi are already on. it's a great concept, and when it works, it's fast. it's just that it's not 100% reliable, hell, it's not even 50% reliable every time i need to send someone a picture.

 

[bushido]

i gave up on this and hand off. it just never works reliable.

 

[tiger2]

Thanks for all the replies. I wish I could take some comfort in knowing others have the same issue, but like someone said, I don't understand why it can't 'just work".

I have been an Apple user for almost 30 years and sometimes I think issues like this are much more common. I'd prefer they didn't put out major OS updates every year and concentrate on fixing things like this.

The last desktop update finally fixed a 2 year old problem with my MacBook Pro where it would sometimes lose its wifi connection and need a restart when it went to sleep.

 

[mattboner]

Just turn off/on airdrop again if doesn't work. This works every time. No problems here with the airdrop

 

[Will22]

Thanks for all the replies. I wish I could take some comfort in knowing others have the same issue, but like someone said, I don't understand why it can't 'just work".

I have been an Apple user for almost 30 years and sometimes I think issues like this are much more common. I'd prefer they didn't put out major OS updates every year and concentrate on fixing things like this.

The last desktop update finally fixed a 2 year old problem with my MacBook Pro where it would sometimes lose its wifi connection and need a restart when it went to sleep.

Yeah considering how few features Apple have on their iPhone/iPad that they could get it right. I suppose we can hope.

 

[I7guy]

Yeah considering how few features Apple have on their iPhone/iPad that they could get it right. I suppose we can hope.

Sure apple has practically no features on their phones. I've never heard of anybody using them other than for making phone calls. My old LG Envy has more features than my iphone 6.

 

[prosopopeia2112]

Here we are at the start of 2017. I have a new MacBook Pro, a MacBook Air, and an iMac, plus a plethora of iDevices. AirDrop works about 25% of the time, even if I am transferring from a brand-new iPhone to the latest laptop. If I wait, it might show up. It might not. Toggle on and off (AirDrop, Bluetooth, WiFi, the phone, the laptop): might work, usually does nothing. As others have pointed out, even when a connection is well established, it may vanish 30 seconds later, not to re-appear for a minute, an hour, a day or a week. It feels literally random, except that if it were random, it would work 50% of the time.

 

[steve knight]

my 7 would no do airdrop at all after I restored it when I first got it. HI had to reset it then it worked. airdrop can really be flaky.

 

[immanence]

Airdrop should just be removed from MacOS/iOS. It works about 5% of the time, if you're lucky. Total garbage. It's like its developers didn't even bother to test it.

 

[BigMcGuire]

Weird, the few times I've used it between my wife's MBP and mine, or our iPhones, it has worked really well. That said, we iMessage 99% of the things we want to share. We have a shared OneDrive folder for anything that requires collaboration or has >10mb.

 

[LizKat]

Weird, the few times I've used it between my wife's MBP and mine, or our iPhones, it has worked really well. That said, we iMessage 99% of the things we want to share. We have a shared OneDrive folder for anything that requires collaboration or has >10mb.

I don't often have a problem with Airdrop but it's not working for me right now on any of three of my iOS devices to transfer a small (110KB) image from my mid-2012 MBP (Mojave 10.14.5), and I have no clue why the laptop suddenly refuses to see the mobiles as potential Airdrop recipients.

One of the SE iPhones is running 12.2, the newer SE is on 12.3.1 and an iPad Pro on 12.3.3 doesn't register either. No problem with Airdrop a week or so ago, or at least it was no problem with the iPad Pro on 12.2 or the newer SE because I remember porting over some images off the MBP to both of them. Can't figure out which piece of gear or software is the miscreant here, since I've very recently reinstalled the OS on the MBP, and I updated the iOS on two of the three mobiles in the past week.​

I'm not inclined to explore it for the moment, I'm just going to use Dropbox to get the darn file copied over. Maybe should have gone that route to begin with but it seemed so simple just to right-click on the image and bring up Airdrop. Sigh... who knew Airdrop was taking the weekend off...

It is sort of weird how Airdrop kinda comes and goes sometimes, or at least seems to do so. Never sure how it rights itself. Right now I figure debugging the setup is like swimming in Jell-O thanks to the recent iOS updates and an OS reinstall (which otherwise has proved uneventful) so I'm not going there.