Wrong AirDrop Name

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Level 4

1,036 points

Wrong AirDrop Name

When I use my iPhone 5S (iOS 8.3) to AirDrop something to my MacBook Pro (OS X 10.10.3), the iPhone doesn't show the proper name of my MacBook Pro in the AirDrop panel. The AirDrop panel on the iPhone SHOULD say "Scott's 15" MacBook Pro", because that's the name of my MacBook Pro in the Sharing System Preferences. However, the AirDrop panel on the iPhone says "My Cell Phone" instead, which is the name of an Address Book card that I created with my iPhone's phone number within it. Note that this Address Book card is NOT set as MY CARD. I have a completely different Address Book card with my full name, which is set to my card. Any way to fix?

Posted on May 21, 2015 8:17 AM

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Answer 1

Best reply

Suresh Kumar Soni

Level 1

9 points

Jun 11, 2015 8:31 PM in response to Scott Rose

Hello Scott Rose,

I had a similar Problem to find that the Air Drop name of my iPhone appearing on my Mac was different. Well, i found that its not the name of the device that is displayed, but its the mobile number or ID associated with your contacts on the Mac. So, i went and checked for my mobile number in the contacts list and found that the name was different. So, i changed my name in the contact book and it immediately changed it on the AirDrop pane. Try this and give me your feed back.

Also, to add that its one of the reasons, AirDrop gives you a choice if you wish to be discovered by people in your contact or by Everyone.

Cheers

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Answer 2

Apr 21, 2017 9:23 PM in response to Scott Rose

What worked for me (after trying the above first, thank you all) was to remove my wife's iCloud account in Preferences / Internet Accounts. After it worked, I was able to re-add it no problem.

What I believe happened is this:

I always had two iCloud accounts on my Mac: my primary (the one logged into Prefs / iCloud), and my wife's (added to Prefs / Internet Accounts) so we could share Contacts.
I logged out of my main iCloud account to resolve another issue a while ago.
This blew away my personal Contacts of course, including my Me card (which you can designate using Contacts / Card / Make this my card), and most likely the cause of how AirDrop started misidentifying my iPhone as being hers.
Logging back into my primary iCloud (Prefs / iCloud) obviously didn't restore things to how they were. I needed to remove the secondary iCloud account to reset some internal device name IDs before all was well again.

Hope this helps someone!

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Answer 3

Scott Rose Author

Level 4

1,036 points

Jun 12, 2015 12:25 PM in response to Suresh Kumar Soni

Thanks so much, Suresh, for enlightening me on this situation. You are correct -- I actually DO have a contact in my Contacts called "My Cell Phone", which I use for calling my cell phone's voicemail (because visual voicemail doesn't always delete voicemails reliably). But what's interesting is that I actually have 2 CARDS in my Contacts that have the exact same cell phone number: (1) my real contact card, and (2) my fake contact card that says "My Cell Phone". It's odd that Apple would choose the fake "My Cell Phone" card instead of my REAL contact card (the card which is designated as "My Card"). I suppose I can delete the "My Cell Phone" card, but would be awesome for Apple to use the "My Card" info instead.

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