How does AirDrop's "Contacts Only" work on the iPhone?

Question

Level 1

42 points

How does AirDrop's "Contacts Only" work on the iPhone?

I'm trying to use AirDrop's on my iPhone with a friend. We both have AirDrop set to "Contacts Only", however we can not see each other. (If we change it to "Everyone" we can see each other's phone names, but not real names and no contact pictures.)

Things I have checked:

We are both signed into iCloud on our phones
We both have iOS 7 and we both have an iPhone 5
We both have each other's email address and phone numbers in our Contacts (we both sign into iCloud with our own @gmail.com addresses, if that makes a difference)
We can iMessage each other with these email addresses and phone numbers (the SMS bubbles are blue instead of green)
We are both on the same WiFi network with Bluetooth turned on

Why won't AirDrop detect that's we're "contacts"?

iPhone 5s, iOS 7

Posted on Sep 26, 2013 10:53 AM

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Answer 1

Bpenny4

Level 1

5 points

Oct 3, 2013 9:52 AM in response to pleomorph

I have a 5C and my wife has a 5S and we were both having the same problem. What worked for me was making sure that we had each other's AppleID e-mail address listed under contacts AND (here's the kicker) that it was designated as the "iCloud" e-mail for each contact, as opposed to "home", "work", "other" etc.

If you go into your friend's contact information and look at where you would add an e-mail address, there should be a small box with an arrow pointing to the e-maill address that sets the type of e-mail it is. Make sure that this box is set to "iCloud" for the e-mail address that is used as the AppleID for the account, in other words, the e-mail that would be used sign into the App Store and iTunes.

Hope this works for you too!

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Answer 2

Bpenny4

Level 1

5 points

Oct 3, 2013 2:26 PM in response to keg55

This is true for me too, actually. For whatever reason, it wasn't working for us before, so we switched the e-mails to iCloud. However, after switching them back to "home", it still worked just fine. Sorry for the confusion.

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Answer 3

keg55

Level 6

11,755 points

Oct 3, 2013 10:33 AM in response to pleomorph

Appears you and your friend have Airdrop and Contact information setup correctly. Are both phones in use and not in sleep mode or stand by?

I'm able to see Contacts for Airdrop using "Contacts Only" when I have that contact's phone number and/or email address entered in Contacts. I don't have to set the email address to iCloud. It's set to home. The test I did was with a friend and we were only 4 feet away from each other. We also had "Contacts Only" set on both our phones and both phones were powered on and NOT in sleep mode. You have to have the recipient's phone in use and not in sleep or stand by.

When "Contacts Only" is used, I see the contact's short name (1st initial of first and last name) as an icon and the first name underneath.

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