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Why does AirDrop only work sometimes?

I have two Macs in the same room. Sometimes, AirDrop works, sometimes it doesn't. It's so random I don't even wanna try it anymore, resorting to a flash drive, instead.


On the source Mac, I right-click the file, select share, AirDrop, then wait for the destination Mac to appear in the list (which sometimes doesn't even show my iPhone, sometimes it does). Then on the destination Mac, I open Finder, click on AirDrop and make sure "Everyone" is still selected.


Most of the times, the destination Mac won't even appear in the source Mac. And when it does, clicking it does nothing, more often than not. It's really a miracle the few times it does work. Absolutely no settings have been changed between the times when it did work and the times when it doesn't work. Any ideas about what I could do to improve AirDrop reliability? Thanks.

Mac mini, macOS 11.4

Posted on Jun 30, 2021 11:16 PM

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Posted on Jun 30, 2021 11:21 PM

Hi! It might be your firewall. If you have your firewall turned on that could get in the way of incoming/outgoing connections. Also make sure your Mac and other devices are on the same network and that they both have Bluetooth enabled. I hope this helps!

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5 replies

Jul 7, 2021 9:31 PM in response to diogoeichert

What year/model are the devices? I found that older models are not reliable; Airdrop's minimum requirements are 2012's and on my 2012 MBP air drop would only work maybe 25% of the time. But, once I got a newer Mac, it suddenly was far more reliable.


By the way, firewall would have nothing at all to do with it. Air drop uses Bluetooth and WiFi.

Why does AirDrop only work sometimes?

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