Airdrop file size limits?

I'm also wondering the same thing. Have had major problems trying to transfer any single file larger than around 4GB. It'll either fail right away or the progress circle will appear and just never move. I've also noticed that with these large files, it takes an unacceptably long time for the permission request to appear on the recieving computer. Sometimes it never does.

I have encountered the same problem. Tried to send 8GB file and it failed right away. I even use Time Capsule as a router at home. For example Time Machine does not limit itself of the backed up file sizes.

Apple has to get this fixed. It is strange that nobody responded since September.

The largest size I could send was just under 1 GB - 8 GB seems a bit much for an ad hoc network. I'd bet it is meant for quick (and small size) transfers, not huge files. Try regular file sharing or other methods for those.

So does apple airdrop have a max size?

I'd really like a formal answer to this question. Almost 30k people have viewed this post, I'm guessing there is some interest in the answer. I'm running into the same problem. I take lots of photos and my wife edits them on her computer. I would like to be able to airdrop all of them from a trip in one shot but I can't right now. I have to create a finder folder, export all the photos to that, then open an airdrop finder window to get them to her. Fairly time consuming this way.

3/10/2016 iphone6 to ipad mini 4 (latest sw updated on both).

Tried airdrop several times on a 3GB video file. After 25% to 75% transferred (different each attempt), all fail.

3/11/2016 it occurs to me to plug both devices in while transferring.

Same file worked first attempt and transferred much faster. Also tried on a 6GB file and it worked first time. Tried other smaller files and all worked first time.

(... maybe something else changed overnight to fix my problem, but...)

all I can guess is that charging while airdropping helps (!?!).

REASON : file format and encoding. You might have format shown as mp4 but when you hit spacebar to preview them on quicktime (mac) that would not play

FIX : convert or remove those files from mac which do not play on quicktime (these files generally have no preview)

i ensured that all files play on quicktime and then moved approx 11 GB of those files. i have used free mp4 convertor from apple store to convert them.

good luck

Can't believe this question was posted 5 years ago yet no answer from any Apple representatives. I have an iPad mini 4 running on iOS 9.1.2 and I have noticed that airdropping items, whether images or videos, more than 100 in number will have great chances of failing so whenever I use airdrop I only limit them to 100 which ***** and by the way, is really inconvenient. This is also consistent across devices such as my friend's iPhone 6 Plus running iOS 9.x whenever we go on a trip and later on airdrop the photos - more than 100 and the Photos app crash.