Airdrop not working for own contacts on iPhone 13 Pro Max

Hello MarcusJKX, 

AirDrop is a great feature, and you’ve come to a wonderful place for help! From the description you provided it sounds as though AirDrop is working when both devices are set to Everyone, but not when you have Contacts Only selected. 

When using AirPlay are you pointing both devices towards each other? If not, make sure they’re pointed towards each other, along with having Wi-Fi and Bluetooth enabled. You can find this information outlined in the following article. 

How to use AirDrop on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch

You’ll also want to make sure that both devices are running the latest iOS version. You can find the steps for updating in the articles below. 

Update your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch

How to update to iOS 15 or iPadOS 15

Have a great day!

I finally got it working too this morning. Not sure why I didn’t think of this. I ended up resetting the network settings - which that didn’t work.

So I decided to reset all settings on the iPhone and that resolved the issue. You’d think apple support would have suggested that, but nope they didn’t.

good chat and glad you’re working too! Hopefully this helps others so they don’t waste time with apple Teir 1 support.

Thank you for trying those steps MarcusJKX. 

In reference to pointing your devices towards each that is stated in the article How to use AirDrop on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch within the section titled On your iPhone 11 or later. We’re a peer-to-peer forum and want to make sure we’re doing all we can to provide a resolution. The steps provided although generic are crucial for reaching a resolution, and ensuring we don’t miss anything that could potentially be causing the issue. With being updated to iOS 15 the next step would be to restart your devices.

Restart your iPhone

If the issue persists then reaching out to Apple for additional assistance is the right direction from here. You can find their contact information via the Get Support website. 

Have a great rest of your week!

See below. It fixed the issue and I had a lot of customization on my iPhone, but if you want to resolve airdrop it’s worth the extra time to reset and just taking the time to reconfigure all your custom settings if you have any.

Steps to reset for those who don’t know if you’re running iOS 15 or later.

Settings - General - Transfer or Reset iPhone - Reset - Reset All Settings

**************************************

• Reset All Settings: All settings—including network settings, the keyboard dictionary, the Home Screen layout, location settings, privacy settings, and Apple Pay cards—are removed or reset to their defaults. No data or media are deleted.

Mine had the same problem and nothing was working.

Solved with the following steps.

There must be a conflict for the contacts between iPhone and iCloud.

1. Setting -> Your Name -> iCloud -> Turn On Contacts
2. Merge
3. Setting -> Your Name -> Sign Out (at the bottom page)
4. Power Off and On the Phone
5. Sign In Your iCloud Account

Hope it helps.

Hi MarcusJKX,

it’s definitely probably a bug with the iPhone 13 Pro/Max. Same thing is happening to me and my parents who have older iPhones. I am able to send airdrop to their iPhones when not listed as contacts (everyone), but the contacts only with their names will not send. I’ve tried multiple methods of repair and none are working. I am reaching out to apple today to replicate the issue. I’ll keep you posted on what they say. Also, I am running the latest iOS 15.0.1

I am having similar issues. I can’t airdrop anything to my wifes phone even though she appears as available. When she tries to airdrop something to me, I don’t come up on her phone. Have tried restarting the phone, turning Bluetooth/Wifi on and off and several other methods but still not working.

iOS 15.1 doesn’t have the fix.

My wife and I are having the same problem with our new iPhone 13 Pro’s (not Max) running iOS 15.1.

Only thing that works for us is to set AirDrop to “everyone”, not “just contacts”.

I don’t know what has happened, but today my wife and I were able to AirDrop between our new iPhone 13 Pro’s, with “contacts only” set in Settings>General>AirDrop.

We have made no changes on our phones since I reported our problem. (We already had installed 15.0.1 earlier.)

However, we both had problems receiving phone calls on Oct 13. (Calls went directly to ATT voice mail.) But this problem self-resolved later that day after a couple of reboots.

In all my years of using various models of iPhones, I have never had such a perplexing experience with a new one.

Could you give details about “resetting all settings on the iPhone “?

Do you really mean every setting in Settings?