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Why is AirDrop so Inconsistent?

B

Bryan Bowler

macrumors 601
Original poster
Sep 27, 2008
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Ever since AirDrop became a feature a few years ago, it has never worked on a consistent basis. I was hoping OS X El Capitan would change that. I'm a huge Apple fan, but this is really disappointing. It's such a blatant problem and I don't know why they have not addressed this yet.

All of my various Apple devices are less than 2 years old. I have very strong wi-fi. I always have bluetooth enabled. When I pull up AirDrop on both devices, they only see each other about 50% of the time. Sometimes it works, but 50% of the time they don't see each other and then I have to resort to using Dropbox or pulling out a portable hard drive to make the transfer. Frustrating.

Does anyone else experience this? Is there anything I'm missing here or doing wrong?
 
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Bryan Bowler said:
Ever since AirDrop became a feature a few years ago, it has never worked on a consistent basis. I was hoping OS X El Capitan would change that. I'm a huge Apple fan, but this is really disappointing. It's such a blatant problem and I don't know why they have not addressed this yet.

All of my various Apple devices are less than 2 years old. I have very strong wi-fi. I always have bluetooth enabled. When I pull up AirDrop on both devices, they only see each other about 50% of the time. Sometimes it works, but 50% of the time they don't see each other and then I have to resort to using Dropbox or pulling out a portable hard drive to make the transfer. Frustrating.

Does anyone else experience this? Is there anything I'm missing here or doing wrong?
Click to expand...
Yes..Airdrop is very hit and miss unfortunately.not reliable at all.I've tried it on many Apple devices and same inconsistancy every time.
on one of the machines that I use (2012 iMac) it doesn't work at all! no matter how long you wait for it yo detect the other device.
Basically it sucks and Apple doesn't seem to care about fixing it.
 
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AirDrop is spotty for me also. I would like to use it often but I rarely try because of how hndependable it is.
 
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It works 100% of the time since Yosemite for me. Mavericks was very hit and miss.

Make sure both wifi and bluetooth on both devices. Set airdrop to everyone on iOS, as well as in Finder (under the Airdrop link on the left pane of finder). See if that works. If not reset one or both machines and try again. It also takes a couple seconds for it to show up on the dialog box btw.
 
fiveainone said:
It works 100% of the time since Yosemite for me. Mavericks was very hit and miss.

Make sure both wifi and bluetooth on both devices. Set airdrop to everyone on iOS, as well as in Finder (under the Airdrop link on the left pane of finder). See if that works. If not reset one or both machines and try again.
Click to expand...

I'm glad it is working for you. All these things have a done for years and have restored various devices frequently and still find it to be unreliable. Don't get me wrong. Sometimes it works perfectly. Other times it's spotty. Therefore, I rarely attempt it.
 
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fiveainone said:
Make sure both wifi and bluetooth on both devices. Set airdrop to everyone on iOS, as well as in Finder (under the Airdrop link on the left pane of finder). See if that works. If not reset one or both machines and try again. It also takes a couple seconds for it to show up on the dialog box btw.
Click to expand...

Thank you for trying to help -- it's much appreciated. I always have Bluetooth and Wi-fi enabled, and I even have the option selected for "Everyone". Yet, it still doesn't work about 50% of the time. I even just rebooted by 2-yr old MBP and my 5K iMac, and after rebooting, neither one can see each other and they are within 6 ft of each other.

Software bugs exist and I get understand that, but this has been a problem for a few years now. And a blatant one at that since the entire thing doesn't even work.

I really am considering writing to Apple on this one. They really should fix it or just eliminate the feature all together.
 
Do you set Airdrop off and on again on both? I remember on Mavericks I had to do that multiple times, and there were sequences I had to follow to make show up. Buggy back then for me, don't have to do that anymore.. but I guess you can try turning off/on everything multiple times and see..

Edit- I just remembered when my mac was also connected to Apple TV, it would make the Airdrop not work. So make sure nothing else is connected to bluetooth.

Edit 2 - Also try this.. click on the AirDrop in Finder first and have it see your phone, THEN tap the share button the phone..
 
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I also get very mixed success with Airdrop to the mac.
Works about 90% of the time between iOS devices however.
 
fiveainone said:
Do you set Airdrop off and on again on both? I remember on Mavericks I had to do that multiple times, and there were sequences I had to follow to make show up. Buggy back then for me, don't have to do that anymore.. but I guess you can try turning off/on everything multiple times and see..

Edit- I just remembered when my mac was also connected to Apple TV, it would make the Airdrop not work. So make sure nothing else is connected to bluetooth.

Edit 2 - Also try this.. click on the AirDrop in Finder first and have it see your phone, THEN tap the share button the phone..
Click to expand...

Thank you for the suggestions. I've tried toggling it off and on. Every now and then, that works. But many times it doesn't. It's just inconsistent for me. I wish the feature actually worked because it would be really useful.
 
It's inconsistent because of the way it works.
It forces an ad-hoc hybrid Wi-Fi+Bluetooth network, in a manner incompatible with some network configurations.
With some configurations, the incompatibility is so bad, that AirDrop can interfere with normal Wi-Fi connectivity.
 
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In that case apple should also look to fix their AEs and TMs then - given I'm using their hardware to do this..
 
fiveainone said:
It works 100% of the time since Yosemite for me. Mavericks was very hit and miss.

Make sure both wifi and bluetooth on both devices. Set airdrop to everyone on iOS, as well as in Finder (under the Airdrop link on the left pane of finder). See if that works. If not reset one or both machines and try again. It also takes a couple seconds for it to show up on the dialog box btw.
Click to expand...

I've tried all those options and no luck so far

fiveainone said:
Edit 2 - Also try this.. click on the AirDrop in Finder first and have it see your phone, THEN tap the share button the phone..
Click to expand...

Exactly how are we supposed to "have it see your phone" when we can't get it to do anything in the first place. :D

The Mac and the iPhone are sitting next to each other and this is all I get, no matter what the settings are...

image.png

Screen Shot 2015-10-04 at 10.56.46.png
 
OllyW said:
I've tried all those options and no luck so far



Exactly how are we supposed to "have it see your phone" when we can't get it to do anything in the first place. :D

The Mac and the iPhone are sitting next to each other and this is all I get, no matter what the settings are...

View attachment 589494
View attachment 589499
Click to expand...

I had the same problem as you. https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/airdrop-driving-me-nuts.1922653/#post-22018149

It's now sorted in beta 2 of 10.11.1 - works every time, its amazing
 
We use it a lot at work between Yosemite machines, it is very unreliable, machines don't always show up properly. Hopefully it is fixed in 10.11.1 when we get around to updating our machines.
 
As long as I have the receiving device unlocked I have a relatively high success rate for AirDrop.
 
I have a Macbook Pro Retina (Late 2013, with Bluetooth 4.0) and I have it all linked up to my iPhone (Email for iMessage, Handoff, iCloud and iCloud Drive etc). It is running El Capitan 10.11.1 Beta 2 and I can sometimes see my iPhone 6+ (Running 9.1 Beta 3) via AirDrop.

However, my iPhone 6+ will not see my Macbook at all, and other devices such as an iPhone 5 running 9.1 Beta 2 will not pick my laptop up either.

I have them all on the same Wi-Fi, bluetooth is all turned on (iPhone 6 wont connect to my Mac for some reason, says its unsupported), AirDrop is set to 'Everyone' on both devices.

Anyone got any advice on why my iPhones cannot see my Mac.

Thanks.
 
AirDrop on ios is very unreliable too, can take up to 2 minutes if at all.

My old Psion 3c, Sienna, Revo & Psion 5 could exchange data via IR with more or less 100% reliability!!

Ps
those days were expensive for tech though, just checked my contacts searching 'psion' and Simple Technology were selling a 32 mb flash for the Psion at £340.00 equal to a 500 GB flash costing £5,312,500 or $8,063,292 needless to say I didn't buy one.
 
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OllyW said:
I've tried all those options and no luck so far



Exactly how are we supposed to "have it see your phone" when we can't get it to do anything in the first place. :D

The Mac and the iPhone are sitting next to each other and this is all I get, no matter what the settings are...

View attachment 589494
View attachment 589499
Click to expand...

I guess I'm just lucky. Had that exact screen just now.. so I looked at my phone, and turned wifi on. Nothing. On the finder, I changed Contacts Only to No One, nothing for 2 secs, changed to Everyone, showed up in 2 sec..
 
davidjearly said:
Unfortunately, 10.11.1 beta 2 has not resolved it at all. I can't get any of my devices - rMB, iPad Air 2, iPhone 6S to see each other (iOS devices running iOS9). It never works. Ever.
Click to expand...
As some have said above, I find that airdrop between my iMac (late 2013), on Mavericks and my iPhone 5s (iOS 8), worked fine. But from Yosemite and on to El Capitan, nothing. Upgraded to iOS 9 on phone, still nothing. Yet my wife has a new iPad Air on iOS 9 and between that and my phone, no problem! But the Mac did pick up the pad the other day for about 10 seconds!! I think we should all bombard Apple with email about this.
 
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