Android and Iphone Users Can Now Share Files, Starting with the Pixel 10
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The nostalgia is palpable as techies reminisce about the good old days of file sharing, sparked by the news that Android and iPhone users can now share files, starting with the Pixel 10. Commenters are waxing poetic about MacOS System 7, recalling its wonky file compatibility with DOS and Windows PCs, with some even remembering the trusty MacLinkPlus utility that saved the day. As the conversation meanders, it becomes clear that while this new file-sharing feature is a step in the right direction, it's not without its limitations - particularly when it comes to sharing with contacts only, which may require some cooperation between Google and Apple. The excitement around this feature also highlights just how much vendor lock-in has become the norm.
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3 decades later, hooray, now we can share files between Android and iPhone!
Operating systems have always used their own filesystems, and it persists to this day.
The only obvious exceptions that come to mind are iso9660 as a standard for CDs, and people generally go out of their way to use FAT/FAT32/whatever on USB keys and SD cards for compatibility with cameras or whatever device they're plugging the card into. But the latter is a choice users actively make to ensure the FS is compatible with the device, rather than a default.
https://security.googleblog.com/2025/11/android-quick-share-...
To ensure a seamless experience for both Android and iOS users, Quick Share currently works with AirDrop's "Everyone for 10 minutes" mode. This feature does not use a workaround; the connection is direct and peer-to-peer, meaning your data is never routed through a server, shared content is never logged, and no extra data is shared. As with "Everyone for 10 minutes" mode on any device when you’re sharing between non-contacts, you can ensure you're sharing with the right person by confirming their device name on your screen with them in person.
This implementation using "Everyone for 10 minutes” mode is just the first step in seamless cross-platform sharing, and we welcome the opportunity to work with Apple to enable “Contacts Only” mode in the future.
The contact-only mode is authenticated using an Apple-signed device certificate and a signed record of those contact identifiers (as hashed UUIDs) that have been registered for a particular Apple ID associated with the device.
Someone with a Mac can extract those from the keychain (the people behind OpenDrop have a tool to do this), but otherwise you'd need to register a new apple ID, get Apple to register the contact information, register a device of some sort and then do all the key exchanges.
We used to be able to send files over Bluetooth before the iPhone came out.
Edit:
Here is the procedure I was talking about and all prerequisites for it to work:
https://support.apple.com/en-us/102635
* Install real mobile firefox, including installing firefox addons I've built for myself. Firefox on iOS is a safari skin
* Install web browser security updates without also updating my entire OS. On Android, firefox is an app. on iOS, safari is a part of the OS that cannot be updated independently
* Install an open source app my friend built without paying $100/year or having to reload it every 7 days
* Build and install an app without owning a macbook or other macOS device, just using linux
* Filter notifications to my garmin smartwatch by-app
* Change the messenger app that handles SMS
* Have a notification center that syncs between linux and my phone (i.e. KDE Connect doesn't work https://invent.kde.org/network/kdeconnect-ios#known-behavior... )
* Have reliably working file-syncing (i.e. syncthing for iOS) because background tasks are something you can do well in android, and barely at all in iOS
* Have access to the source code to debug and fix problems
* Have the ability to flash my own custom kernel / rom (not all android devices, but many)
.... Really, not being able to write and install my own app without paying apple $100, and without owning a macbook is the big dealbreaker, followed by iOS restricting APIs needed to do all sorts of things like proper notification handling, proper NFC, etc etc.
It amazes me that so many people on the "hacker news" forum are okay with their primary computing device being wildly hostile to the hacker spirit, to the desire to tinker around for fun and learn and hack on things.
* Apple doesn't allow 3rd Party watches to send text messages. The Apple Watch is allowed to do so.
* Apple doesn't allow 3rd Party to take actions on notifications. The Apple Watch is allowed to do so.
* If you want to use the internet on your watch, you must: 1) install a 3rd party app, 2) keep that app open. Closing the app closes the connection to the internet. The Apple Watch does not have this restriction.
* 3rd Party watches cannot detect if you are using your phone. This means that they will notify users of notifications even if the user is looking at the notification. The Apple Watch does not have this restriction.
* Apple does not have ‘interprocess communication’(IPC) like Android.
* Apple restricts making 3rd Party App Stores. This makes it difficult to make a community of people making watch faces.
All points come from Pebble's blog [1]. This is just a single type of integration that Apple intentionally makes difficult, there are many others (e.g. 3rd Party Photos App, ...)
[1] https://ericmigi.com/blog/apple-restricts-pebble-from-being-...
I understand that some people get confused and overwhelmed by a directory structure, but I see that as an education problem, not a UX problem. I was taught all of this in elementary and middle school computer classes in the '90s and early '00s. Having this knowledge early on made me less afraid of my computer, made it feel less like a magical black box, and gave me the confidence to learn more complex topics on my own.
Computers become way more capable when the people using them understand fundamentals like directory structures and command line usage. I don't think either of these things are as difficult to learn as reading, writing, and arithmetic (especially if you already have a base level education in those three things).
If more "everyday people" just had a little bit more knowledge about these things, they would be able to do way more with their computers with less of a reliance on proprietary solutions that funnel them down whatever path makes someone else the most money.
i want file system access, but as a power tool. the 50 clicks through different folders is irrelevant to my most common 5 patterns of use. those should be a single click, or 0 clicks
Where is zoxide for my phone? Why is there so little innovation?
Trillion dollar companies can't come up with a single new thing. Or rather, won't come up with a single new thing because they're just useless rent seekers.
It's absolutely pathetic.
"The file disappeared. I can't find it."
"Look in the download folder."
"How do I get to that?"
Never have been different. What did your relatives doing?
There were cases where phones were not consistent. Pictures from the camera, or saved from MMS, or saved from the Web, or screenshots, did not all go in the same place. Just like you would have on a desktop :) I don't remember that well the pre-2010 android, but it had some issues too.
Even to this day, WhatsApp saves photos to the gallery, but in its own album. At least on iOS those are part of the regular gallery so you'll always find them (an album is just a "tag" on the photo). Android has a dedicated album too, but the picture set is distinct from the main picture gallery. So are screenshots. That's more control and power, but utterly confusing for older people. Younger relatives are fine, older fail to navigate around this and find "the picture your auntie sent to me through whatsapp". Yup, it's there, but not in the main camera roll.
This is what I mean by "you know where the pictures are going".
PS: Apple botched the UX of the gallery app in the last two iOS versions so much that even I, a young tech-inclined person, loses my way around. So do my relatives. They're sorta catching up /s
Apple likes to have far more control than that.
There was almost a whole decade there where Apple pretended that the feature just didn't need to exist.
You are correct that each app can only see a specific part of the filesystem, unless the apps are by the same developer and part of an App Group.
Apple added copy/paste in iOS 3.0 in 2009
Also, on Android, you can choose any file explorer. You're stuck with Files and it sucks (but it looks nice).
This is why I've avoided non Pixel phones since the Pixel5 came out. None of that 2 or 3 apps for the same thing so everybody can get their ad cut payout.
It was around that time it (Files app) got a major refresh.
Now "bluetooth" I could buy (and I do not miss at all).
Android misses the mark so much with MTP and iPhone… waves frantically at iTunes.
(At least, in a weird bizarre twist, the iPhone’s Files app is actually really useful for me. I find myself formatting flash drives, copying stuff from network shares, etc, all from my phone and it’s so nifty to have nearly-first-class features there.)
I know that read/write conflict concerns are what got USB Mass Storage mode removed from Android, but surely there's some way to resolve that. Like it wouldn't bother me a bit if Android just locked the device and put it in "file transfer mode" when it's mounted on a computer, similar to how iPods used to and how Kobo e-readers do now. It'd be worth the universal robust multi-platform support.
Depending on whether the respective kernel supported it, you were still unofficially able to switch removable SD cards into mass storage mode (though only with a rooted phone), although somehow, even if I remembered to officially unmount the SD card from Android first, it somehow still often led to mild filesystem corruption (luckily never anything fatal, though) that required regular chkdsk-usage.
> Or they could have figured out a new version of MTP that supports basic features like concurrent access and normal metadata. Or they could have gone for SMB/NFS over a virtual network link.
My current phone no longer supports the above mass storage mode-hack for the removable SD card, which annoyed me enough that I actually wrote my own SMB server app (https://github.com/buttercookie42/SimbaDroid), because all other SMB servers for Android that I'm aware of were either outright broken, unsupported, buggy or fiddly to use. Sadly the only open source Java-based SMB server only supports SMBv1, so you're stuck with that, and you still need root for full comfort, but within those limitations it works quite nicely.
Cross platforms, really? So for example between a Blackberry and a Windows CE phone?
Yes, it was part of the Bluetooth file transfer spec[0] and possible between any two devices that implemented it correctly.
0: https://www.bluetooth.com/specifications/specs/file-transfer...
It’s still a classic Apple “the open standard sucks so build a proprietary one that’s great but only on iPhone”
Bluetooth was a huge upgrade because you no longer needed to do that.
Phones other than iPhones can still share files with each other and with computers using Bluetooth. But people instead use apps like WhatsApp or e-mail for file transfers, even in places where iPhone's market penetration is near zero.
This was just as broadband was getting popular, so those who had it usually downloaded MP3s and then distributed them at school through Bluetooth. I remember one friend using her phone as a bridge to copy files from me using Bluetooth and sending to another friend's phone using IR.
This was across all the classroom, this definitely wasn't restricted to the nerdy clique. We found out that chatting through notes exchange worked pretty well and then it spread like wildfire. SMSes were expensive in my country!
This was like 20 years ago. Maybe 2006-2007. Twenty years later we're commemorating that Bluetooth File Exchange over WiFi is now interoperable between the only two major mobile OS as if it were a revolutionary technology. How backwards it is.
My mom was upset that she would lose her photos, so I puzzled over it for a long time trying to figure out a way. Finally, I realized I was being stupid and missing the obvious: both phones had Bluetooth! I paired them with each other, dug through Razr menus, selected the photos, and did a Bluetooth file send. As expected, the photos went right over. Well, I shouldn't say right over because it was very slow, but it worked just as it should.
Here is a more hilarious attempt to break Vendor lock from the 90s!: https://youtu.be/TcJBXgmdX44?t=98
Things were more fun back then. Now Google vs Apple is so BORING! :D
On the other hand, with the ubiquity of always-on Internet access and cheap data plans, in most situations where Bluetooth would have been used, I now see WhatsApp being used instead.
kind of worked with flip-phone resolutions, but tiresome with multi-megabyte pictures of today
The answer to your first question may simply be they want to sell more Pixel 10 phones.
The investment into custom silicon is more likely to pay off when new and exiting features are exclusive to the newer platform.
Neither Apple nor Google is doing anything revolutionary with their silicon for such a standard compute task. It's really mostly minor tuning to get a more optimal part instead of an off-the-shelf chip catering to other uses too, with die area and power consumption "wasted" in your setup.
1. https://github.com/seemoo-lab/opendrop
https://security.googleblog.com/2025/11/android-quick-share-...
Also `we welcome the opportunity to work with Apple to enable “Contacts Only” mode in the future` doesn't make it sound like Apple actually helped implement this
Then I assume they'll roll it out further
For better or worse, I do own Pixel 10
Short story: I did a long trip across two continent with my wife. Me with an Android devices, her on iOS. We did backup our photos in our own private cloud but guess how we had to quick exchange photos while in the wild (no wifi and sometimes no network)? We couldn't. Because Google and Apple did everything so we couldn't.
Google wants to your data and fought for the cloud. Apple don't want Android users to easily partake in some data exchange with iOS users (you gotta buy your ticket to their jail). So sad you don't realize how backward that is.
Just needs a WebRTC capable browser.
They got smoked in court, see ruling at https://ec.europa.eu/competition/digital_markets_act/cases/2...
> we welcome the opportunity to work with Apple to enable “Contacts Only” mode in the future.
> I applaud the effort to open more secure information sharing between platforms and encourage Google and Apple to work together more on this.
Your move, Apple.
Google is going hard after iPhone users by trying to punch holes in Apple's walled garden anytime they can. AirDrop is another hole in the wall, as was Magsafe, and RCS.
If Google can get other AWDL features working between macOS and Android, particularly universal clipboard and universal control, I'd seriously consider switching back to Android after many, many years on iOS purely for the ecosystem integration. iMessage doesn't bother me, but I use AirDrop, AirPods auto switching on calls, and universal clipboard daily and those are all blockers for my considering a switch.
/s
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