Airdrop with Catalina lost ability to connect with older MacBook?

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Airdrop with Catalina lost ability to connect with older MacBook?

I use airdrop all the time to transfer files from my iMac to my older MacBook Pro when I am about to travel. Now with my iMac updated to Catalina, I no long have the option to "look for an older Mac" in the Airdrop window on my iMac. Is there a fix for this?

I absolutely hate the way Apple makes good still working devices obsolete with their updates, or forces us to use less intuitive interfaces as part of the updates. Catalina is very much a mixed bag in this regard (and in many ways a pain)!

iMac 27", macOS 10.15

Posted on Oct 27, 2019 12:57 PM

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Answer 1

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DanG77 Author

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Oct 27, 2019 1:24 PM in response to DanG77

Well, I have figured out my own fix for this. I simply went to File Sharing in System Preferences on the iMac, allowed access to the files I need to transfer, and then the iMac is visible in the network from the MacBook, allowing me to copy (transfer) files easily.

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Answer 2

Dec 11, 2019 4:11 AM in response to DanG77

Thank you so much for your post. I was sad to loose the air drop function with my old macbook after installing Catalina on my newer macbook today. I tried everything to get it working again, then I read your post. It made me sad to find out that the 2 shall never air drop together again. But...your fix works a charm. Thanks again.

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Answer 3

Jan 5, 2020 10:57 AM in response to DanG77

While your workaround is a valid one, it does not address my situation. I have an iMac running Catalina. My wife has an old MacBookPro running El Capitan. With the advent of Catalina, we don't even have the option of looking for older machines like we did on Mojave and Mavericks. I would like to AirDrop pictures and files to my wife's machine, but it is no longer an option to even look for it. I can certainly understand if the AirDrop Protocol changed with Catalina to make it incompatible with older versions, but give us a backward compatible version for at least a few years so that we can catch up at our own pace, Please! PowerPC apps were allowed to run on Intel chip-based macs for many years. 32-bit apps were allowed to run on 64-bit macs for many years. Why cut us off so abruptly?

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Answer 4

DanG77 Author

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Jan 5, 2020 9:50 PM in response to DanaMarksVoice

I share your frustration. I've lost other functionality with Catalina, as my late 2013 iMac has had Thunderbolt (first generation) external hard drives for TM backups for years. Now they are causing random shutdowns. I've spent countless time, a few hundred dollars having Apple Service Tech trouble shoot the problem, done several clean installs, but nothing has fixed the issue. USB external drives work, but with the Thunderbolt drives (one brand new under warranty replacement, because I wondered if it could have been the drive itself), crashes (scary! screen just goes black) persists. Clearly it is an issue with Catalina itself not playing nice with the Griffin G-Drive (I retired the other drive).

That said, I have found some glitches in using File Sharing as I recommended. My MacBook is early 2011. If I look for the iMac from it, File Sharing is wonky, and not reliable. If, however, I look for the MacBook from the Go> Network menu in the Finder of the iMac, then go to the MacBook, I can go into subfolders within the MacBook as deep as I want. I can drag files either direction, and unlike Airdrop, I can put files exactly where I want them, not just into the Downloads folder. I've actually found it more convenient and faster than Airdrop... a pleasant surprise. File Sharing has to be turned on in the System Preferences for this to work. Hope it can solve your issues. As for mine with the Thunderbolt drives, I guess I have to the G-Drive Pro (not cheap!) and that has me pretty frustrated after spending so much time (and money) trouble shooting a problem that is clearly of Apple's making, and unresolvable except by their software engineers (if they even acknowledge the problem).

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Answer 5

Jan 21, 2020 1:23 PM in response to DanG77

Thank you for this. As far as my (>10 years) Mac experience goes, Catalina is the least useful and most troublesome macOS "upgrade" ever. I have found zero benefit from it and many, many problems. I have spent hours on the phone with really able Apple advisors fixing, or not fixing, a whole series of bugs and failures. And this is after waiting until 10.15.2 to migrate from Mojave.

I now have most of the functionality of Mojave with the exception of the replacement for the audiobooks part of iTunes. The Books app is so minimal that it does not even rises to the level of a simple filing system. Pathetic.

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Airdrop with Catalina lost ability to connect with older MacBook?

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