AirDrop Problems in iOS 8.1

At least in my case, if I set AirDrop for Everyone, then things will work just fine. My problem seems to be the fact that I cannot enable AirDrop for Contacts Only. I can turn it off, or set it to Everyone, and in these two cases things work as expected.

2cruzin, AirDrop between Mac and iOS requires the Mac to be from 2012 or newer. Are your Macs new enough?

Solved - but only by restore as new iPhone.

My case is a bit different, but just sharing in case someone has this similar problem.

My problem was using airdrop between iPhone 5 iOS 8.1 and MBA 2014 (OS 10.10/Yosemite). At first, my MBA can detect the iPhone, but iPhone can't detect the MBA. I troubleshoot and conclude it's the iPhone's faulty bc both my MBA and iPad air can detect each other, or even the iPhone itself w/ airdrop, but iPhone can't detect both of em. The simple solution I found is simply by restarting the iPhone (turning off and on). Now my iPhone can detect my MBA & vice versa, and it just recently successful on transferring file.

In order to transfer files between a Mac and and an iPhone, iPad or iPod touch, your iOS device needs iOS 7 or later installed and your Mac needs to be a 2012 or later model.

I have the same problem with airdrop. iPhone 6 with ios8.1 Macbook pro(early 2013) with 10.10. The phone shows up on the macbook and a simple drag and drop sends a picture to the phone and into photo collections, all very simple. BUT the macbook does not show up in the iPhone 6 airdrop and I can not use this method to transfer photos from the phone to the macbook. 😢😕😠

I'm experiencing the same exact issue with my iphone 6 iOS 8.1 and MBP(mid 2012) running 10.10. I can transfer from MBP to iphone, but not iphone to MBP. I've tried logging in and out of iCloud and the app store on both devices with multiple restarts.

A COMMON MISTAKE

For those who are having trouble viewing your OS X Yosemite from your iOS 8 via Airdrop. A common mistake that everyone made is probably to leave your "Allow me to be discovered by:" as "Contacts Only" on OSX. Change it to "Everyone" and it will show up!

I was rebooting my phone and PC constantly, to figure out whats wrong, a small switch and viola, it works.

Note: This is only for those who haven't done it the right way.

This is from Apples's site:

Using AirDrop with OS X Lion, Mountain Lion or Mavericks

System Requirements

AirDrop requires that both Mac computers include Wi-Fi hardware that supports AirDrop mode. Both Mac computers need to have OS X Lion or later installed.

To see if your Mac works with AirDrop, make sure you’re in the Finder by clicking the desktop (the background area of your screen), or by clicking the Finder icon in the Dock. Then, check to see if AirDrop is listed as an option in the Go menu. If you don't see AirDrop listed, your Mac doesn't support this feature.

You won't be able to receive AirDrop files if you have enabled "Block all incoming connections" in the Security & Privacy pane of System Preferences.

Macs that include AirDrop support are the same as, or newer than, the models listed below.

• MacBook Pro (Late 2008 or newer)*
• MacBook Air (Late 2010 or newer)
• MacBook (Late 2008 or newer)*
• iMac (Early 2009 or newer)
• Mac Mini (Mid 2010 or newer)
• Mac Pro (Early 2009 with AirPort Extreme card, or Mid 2010)

*The MacBook Pro (17-Inch Late 2008) and the white MacBook (Late 2008) do not support AirDrop.

Upon further review, I was wrong. That is only for Mac to Mac... IOS to Mac requires 2012 or newer.

Same for me - nothing either way is visible. MBP mid-2011 w/Yosemite, iPhone 6 w/8.1.

I'm having Air Drop issues between my iPhone 6 and iPad Air 2 both running 8.1. Turning iCloud Drive off and them back on, on both devices seems to have helped.

I started having problems with iCloud password prompts in iOS 8.1 when trying to compose new emails and then stumbled across this issue with AirDrop. There's another thread going on over here about the issue too: iOS 8.1: creating new mail asks for icloud password

Still haven't managed to get my issue resolved and I've done everything I can think of (DFU, setting up fresh, etc.) the problem seems to be tied to something with the iCloud account.