AirDrop conitnually Failing between iPhone and MacBook

I spent HOURS at the local Genius Bar trying to get this issue fixed. Hours more on several phone sessions with senior tech advisors at Apple.

But the guy on the phone actually pointed me in the direction of resolving the issue myself.

My problem was that I had several different contact cards for myself, each for a separate purpose, but they all had my Apple ID on them (both email and phone) and 2 of them had my secondary Apple ID that I use for App Store and iTunes Store purchases.

I modified those cards so that only one of them contained my main Apple messaging ID phone number and email. That information was removed from ALL other cards. then I made sure that the same contact cards on my phone were identical to those on my Mac.

Restart, restart.

Problem solved: AirDrop and HandOff now both work as they should in both directions.

I urge everybody to Google "Apple Feedback" and let them know what's going on, because they really aren't paying attention.

However, my.computer is named [ComputerName].

On my iPhone today, I tapped AirDrop and saw [ComputerName} at the top of the list as usual.

But today I scrolled down to find another item named exactly the same, but this one without the correct icon.

I transferred to that and it worked almost instantly.

It's a gibbly, inattentive glitch in Sonoma.

Please let Apple know.

Hi All,

As an additional piece of information, I also did a hard reset on the phone Vol up, Vol down, On/Off button until apple symbol reappears and that appears to have solved it. I did that to solve a non-charging issue and it also cured this issue. Hope this helps!

After upgrading to macOS 14, I could no longer AirDrop to Mac; however, AirDrop from Mac and between mobile devices worked.

I tried some of the suggested fixes here and elsewhere. None of them worked.

So I looked in the Console error log and saw that there was an AirDrop error that the destination did not exist. (It would have been helpful for the error notification to have stated this instead of “sfoperation error -2.”

I have a symbolic link from Downloads to Desktop. After restoring the Downloads folder and then restarting, AirDrop to Mac worked. The symlink is more important to me than AirDrop, but at least I know why it was failing.

In decades of using Mac, no other application has ever had an issue with the symlink, and previous versions of macOS did not, either.

I was on iOS 17.4 on my iPhone 13 and Sonoma 14.4 on my Macbook Air M2. I was having the issue of my Airdop failing/declining from my phone to Macbook. In fact, my MacBook wouldn't even detect my iPhone on the airdrop. I Already tried basic troubleshooting like turning off & on the Bluetooth and wifi of both devices, restarting them, and updating them. At last, I signed out of my Apple ID on the Macbook and signed back in, which fixed the problem. Hope this helps, thanks!

Thank you! Clicking on "other devices" and saw a duplicate of the same computer name. Clicked on this one instead of the one that comes up automatically. It worked!!

The reply from Arman Rajabzadeh in this post worked for me.

I could Airdrop from my Macbook running Sonoma 14.3 up TO my iPhone but when Airdropping FROM my iPhone down to my Macbook I was getting a "Waiting"message on my iPhone.

His fix is to enter the following command in the Terminal:

sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.mDNSResponder.plist NoMulticastAdvertisements -bool false

Then restart the computer.

Hi there,

I've tried the "sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.mDNSResponder.plist NoMulticastAdvertisements -bool false" command from Blade996 & Arman_Rajabzadeh and rebooted. Doesn't worked for me. Investigating the Sonoma 14.4.1 Firewall details (System menu -> Network -> Firewall -> Options...) and disabled the "Block all incoming connections". (sorry if wrong : translated from french menus). Tried a new airdrop from my iPhone and iPad (each with latest 17.4.1 update) and YES ! IT WORKS !!!

Hope this helps

MachitoLFC wrote:

17.0.3 is the latest

That is not what you posted before.

Make sure to reboot the computer and power cycle the iPhone. Sometimes they both just need to be rebooted.

If that does not work, then see if you can turn off Air Drop on the computer, then turn it back on. I was going down that road the last time I had an issue with Air Drop. Sometimes just toggling settings can help.

Use AirDrop on your Mac to send files to devices near you - Apple Support

Can the iPhone actually see the computer as an option for the destination?

It worked after I turned off my VPN

This fix worked for me after iPhone to Mac AirDrop repeatedly failed with "Waiting" shown. I typed this line in Terminal as suggested by Blade 996 and Arman Rajabzadeh:

sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.mDNSResponder.plist NoMulticastAdvertisements -bool false

When AirDrop failed going from iPhone to Mac, I noticed that the Mac Airdrop icon was generic. After running the sudo command, the Mac Airdop icon switched to my current wallpaper.

Tried everything else in this thread and it didn't work for me. Thanks Blade 996 and Arman Rajabzadeh!

Hi CCSFO, if you sort the replies in this post to "Newest" you should see replies from myself and jfernsle with the code you can enter into the Terminal of your MacBook. You don't say which version of MacOS you are using but this does seem to work for Sonoma so hopefully it will for you too:

sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.mDNSResponder.plist NoMulticastAdvertisements -bool false

Then restart the computer.

Additionally, I had a VPN on my Macbook, which I found out was another reason. After I turned it off, the Airdrop worked fine.

I had this issue for many many months. I have finally found a solution on my own, and it actually solved a lot of other issues I was having.

So, it appears that for *some* iOS user profiles, they are glitching out with appleID logins. I noticed on my laptop that I was unable to log out of my appleID (even going into appleID on browser and disconnecting my computer did not clear the appleID from the user profile).

What I ended up doing was creating a fresh user profile and logging into my appleID on that one. I transferred all of my files and such to the new user profile (took some time to get everything set back up) but it solved two major problems I was having:

1. airdrop works perfectly every single time now, both to and from my computer and my phone;
2. I was having major issues with internet connectivity. My laptop would randomly drop internet connection, even while connected to the network with no network issues and no problems with any other device. Only restart would fix these internet issues (and only sometimes). Usually I just had to wait for hours and restart multiple times to get it to work again. Now, not a single internet connectivity issue since switching to a new fresh profile.

I am not sure what happened to mess up my user profile - my guess is maybe a the backup I set up my new laptop with was corrupted. Maybe it was an issue with Sonoma and certain profiles. Who knows. It does seem like there have been others with the same appleID/user profile issues with Sonoma though.

I was pretty shocked that just this one change fixed pretty much all of my issues though, so I wanted to share it!

It's a VPN issue.

iPhone 15 Pro Max and Mac mini M2. I tried updates, rebooting etc. and then noticed the comments about VPNs (thanks all for the tip). Once I disconnected my VPN it worked in both directions. Problem solved but still a pain to have to disconnect the VPNM every time that I want to AirDrop something.