AirDrop set to "Everyone" still doesn't work

My family has an iPhone 5, iPad 4, iPad Air and retina iPad mini. All with the latest iOS 7 updates, all on the same WiFi, all with Bluetooth and Airport enabled, and all set to Everyone.


Even when tested inches away, a using Safari to share a link exhibits the following:


- None of the devices can see the retina Mini, and it can't see any of them.


- The iPad 4 can see the iPad Air, but nobody can see the iPad 4.


- The iPad Air and iPhone 5 can see each other, but nobody else can see the iPhone.


Toggling AirDrop on and off (and using Apple's troubleshooting tips) doesn't help. But even of it did, it's not worth the hassle when email "just works." I have the patience to try lots of things to share something simple, and keep using AirDrop even if it works only occasionally. But the rest of my family is done spending time on it. It seems they will not be AirDrop users!


Can Air Drop Everyone be made to be reliable, or is it just not ready yet?


It would be great if I could just walk up to iOS users and share stuff, but currently it has been an embarrassing failure.

Posted on Dec 22, 2013 5:24 PM

Reply
23 replies

Jan 4, 2014 7:40 AM in response to Morgan Adams1

Airdrop is not setup correctly in ios7 if anyone shares an Apple ID as their main icloud account. My family can not use it because we all have to share our main Apple ID in order to see all devices on one find my iphone app. We all have separate apple IDs for contacts, notes, FaceTime and imessage, but it has to be secondary the way apple has ios7 set up (we used to be able to turn on find my iphone with our secondary id in ios 6).


So if you want airdrop to work flawlessly as it is now, here is how you set it up. Understand that airdrop uses your main icloud account to identify you and your contacts contents to identify other airdrop users. Each person has to have their main icloud be different. That email has to be in each other's contacts ONLY as you. You need to set it as me on your device and make sure it's not in any other contacts in your device. They need to have that email in your contact on their device and not in anyone else's. It should work perfectly if that is all setup correctly.

Feb 2, 2016 4:20 AM in response to javifernandezr

This AirDrop seems to be a piece of ****. It works sometimes, sometimes not. It is much more easier to just use cables, if it is possible. Otherwise just use email or other cloud services. I've spent a lot of time by reading these instructions and booting my iPhone, iMac and MacBookPro. It is like win in lottery when you get it work. After 5 minutes it is not working anymore. This airdrop is a nice feature, in theory. I hope someone could find some other common way to share e.g. photos between any kind of phones and devices, including Android devices.

Mar 5, 2016 6:08 AM in response to Morgan Adams1

Agree...completely frustrating, everything is on...wi-fi and bluetooth on both sides. Set to share with "everyone" but iPhone can't see my MacBook Pro. But after reading this thread I turned off airdrop on my iPhone 6, then back on, and now it sees my Macbook Pro. Why??? This is Apple. We all pay a premium for their stuff...it should just work. That's why we bought it.

Mar 22, 2016 2:05 PM in response to Morgan Adams1

Airdrop has only worked a couple of times for me. It worked once in my office between my Macbook Air and an iMac on the same WiFi network through an Apple Airport Express. It may have worked once or twice in my home, where all equipment is Apple and computers have Airdrop setup to "see" everyone. In short, it has been a big failure as far as I'm concerned.

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AirDrop set to "Everyone" still doesn't work

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