Jim Rossman: AirDrop is coming to Android phones

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The cell phone world is divided into two camps – iPhone users and Android users.

Apple curates new features for iOS and Google develops for Android, and they likely don’t spend a ton of time worrying about how their phones interact with phones from the other company.

There are features that are exclusive to iOS or Android that work because of some magic behind the scenes.

One of the most visible features that didn’t play nice between iOS and Android has to do with text messages.

Apple’s iMessage was introduced back in 2011, and it brought features like easier sharing of photos and videos, read receipts and some group chat features like being able to leave a chat or mute notifications.

iMessage also introduced the concept of blue messages (iMessages) and green messages (SMS messages).

If a group chat included just one Android user, those cool iMessage group chat features would not work. Apple is working on making Android more interoperable with iMessage.

Another Apple feature called AirDrop makes it super simple for Apple phone, tablet and computer users to magically transfer files to other Apple devices.

Every time our family gathers for holidays, I’m usually the one who takes the group photos with my iPhone, and these days everyone else in my family has iPhones so before we leave, I AirDrop the photos to everyone else.

Apple makes it very simple to select and wirelessly transfer dozens of photos almost instantly. iPhones in the vicinity of each other just show up and are able to accept transfers.

Google introduced some AirDrop-compatible features on the Pixel 10 phone, and they call the feature QuickShare and announced that upcoming Android releases would bring AirDrop compatibility to more phones.

Apple is also working on making it easier to move files to Android users with a new feature called Transfer to Android that showed up in the latest iOS 26.3 beta.

This means both companies are working to make moving files easier, which is great for all of us.