iPhone Airdrop, driving me nuts!

[johnalan]

Hello there,

I've spent **days** trying to troubleshoot this issue.

I've got a Macbook Air (2014) (currently El Capitan GM) and an iPhone 6 (9.0.1).

My wife has another iPhone 6 (iOS 8.4)

I've tried for days to get airdrop to work and it's simply not working from OS X to iOS.

It's so frustrating. I've had it work before in the past, but never reliably.

Anyway,

* iOS to iOS airdrop **works** between the two iPhones (8.4 to 9.0.1) and vice versa. No problem every time - either way.

* I've installed Mavericks/Yosemite/El Cap GM/El Cap 10.11.1...
None of them work trying to use airdrop between OSX and iOS. Like each OS completely fresh install. (after HOURS and HOURS of troubleshooting on El Cap before doing the 3 clean installs!!)

I've followed every article I can find, from voodoo like 'pairing' my iPhone to my Mac, all the way to having the firewall disabled or enabled, to having bluetooth preferences open to SMB sharing being enable to AFP sharing on or off, such nonsense but I tried...

For a while I was playing with trashing various BT preferences/network prefs, but since the 3 complete clean installs I'm gonna guess prefs have nothing to do with it. iCloud signed in and out 10 times, bluetooth and wifi ON OFF ON OFF.. jesus its so annoying.

The best bit is **Continuity/Handoff** works **perfectly** between my phone and mac. including text message forwarding, making calls from the Mac, apps like mail and messages show in the dock when I'm writing messages... even the instant hotspot feature works, browsing in safari show in the bottom of multitasking on iOS - all of it...

Just not airdrop from the mac to iOS or iOS to the mac. The iPhone/Mac doesn't show up on each other.

My wife's iPhone doesn't see the mac either, nor can the mac see hers...


In addition to the above I have been hyper careful to ensure all routers are open to bonjour doing its thing, I'm even using a Airport Extreme.

I'm ensuring the iPhones are set to 'everybody' visibility as is the mac.

EVERY single thing I can think of I've done, every permutation of possible interaction between the devices i've facilitated. I've even given the mac and iPhone over an hour to 'find' each other.

So has anyone got any idea why airdrop sucks so ****ing much?

What am I missing?


Thanks,
John

 

[DJTaurus]

Yeah Yeah.... join the party Mate..... such a shame for Apple. A so advertized feature that most of the times didnt work for me.... i cant believe how apple got a free pass on this from the apple community.
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/i-hope-in-ios-2020-airdrop-will-be-functional.1920339/

 

[Armen]

Hello there,

I've spent **days** trying to troubleshoot this issue.

I've got a Macbook Air (2014) (currently El Capitan GM) and an iPhone 6 (9.0.1).

My wife has another iPhone 6 (iOS 8.4)

I've tried for days to get airdrop to work and it's simply not working from OS X to iOS.

It's so frustrating. I've had it work before in the past, but never reliably.

Anyway,

* iOS to iOS airdrop **works** between the two iPhones (8.4 to 9.0.1) and vice versa. No problem every time - either way.

* I've installed Mavericks/Yosemite/El Cap GM/El Cap 10.11.1...
None of them work trying to use airdrop between OSX and iOS. Like each OS completely fresh install. (after HOURS and HOURS of troubleshooting on El Cap before doing the 3 clean installs!!)

I've followed every article I can find, from voodoo like 'pairing' my iPhone to my Mac, all the way to having the firewall disabled or enabled, to having bluetooth preferences open to SMB sharing being enable to AFP sharing on or off, such nonsense but I tried...

For a while I was playing with trashing various BT preferences/network prefs, but since the 3 complete clean installs I'm gonna guess prefs have nothing to do with it. iCloud signed in and out 10 times, bluetooth and wifi ON OFF ON OFF.. jesus its so annoying.

The best bit is **Continuity/Handoff** works **perfectly** between my phone and mac. including text message forwarding, making calls from the Mac, apps like mail and messages show in the dock when I'm writing messages... even the instant hotspot feature works, browsing in safari show in the bottom of multitasking on iOS - all of it...

Just not airdrop from the mac to iOS or iOS to the mac. The iPhone/Mac doesn't show up on each other.

My wife's iPhone doesn't see the mac either, nor can the mac see hers...


In addition to the above I have been hyper careful to ensure all routers are open to bonjour doing its thing, I'm even using a Airport Extreme.

I'm ensuring the iPhones are set to 'everybody' visibility as is the mac.

EVERY single thing I can think of I've done, every permutation of possible interaction between the devices i've facilitated. I've even given the mac and iPhone over an hour to 'find' each other.

So has anyone got any idea why airdrop sucks so ****ing much?

What am I missing?


Thanks,
John

Believe it or not my buddy had this issue and restarting his router actually fixed it. (I know it doesnt make sense, just do it)

 

[getrealbro]

Believe it or not my buddy had this issue and restarting his router actually fixed it. (I know it doesnt make sense, just do it)

FYI Restarting my Airport Extreme did NOT fix AirDrop for me. The 5s (running 7.1.2) briefly appeared on my 6s (running 9.0.1) while trying to AirDrop a photo from the Camera Roll, but as soon as I tried to AirDrop it. The 5s disappeared.

---GetRealBro

 

[Armen]

FYI Restarting my Airport Extreme did NOT fix AirDrop for me. The 5s (running 7.1.2) briefly appeared on my 6s (running 9.0.1) while trying to AirDrop a photo from the Camera Roll, but as soon as I tried to AirDrop it. The 5s disappeared.

---GetRealBro

Sorry to hear it didn't work for you. Waiting to hear back from OP to see if it helped him.

 

[johnalan]

Sorry to hear it didn't work for you. Waiting to hear back from OP to see if it helped him.

Hey my friend. Didn't fix it unfortunately! The console logs change when I try airdrop. Are you able to take a look if I post them?

 

[Armen]

Hey my friend. Didn't fix it unfortunately! The console logs change when I try airdrop. Are you able to take a look if I post them?

Sorry to hear that. It was so strange that my buddy and his wife's iphones couldn't see each other in order to Airdrop but restarting his Wifi router (which shouldn't even play a role in this) suddenly made things work.

 

[dsnows]

I have had a lot of crankiness with airdrop also. Sometimes works, sometimes not. Sometimes restarting a phone makes it visible. I like it when it works. Wish it were more reliable.

 

[johnalan]

Wow it's literally perfect in el cap 10.11.1 b2!!