AirDrop* comes to the Pixel 10

Google is really going out of their way to make their Pixel line as compatible with iPhones as possible. Today, the company announced an update available immediately for Pixel 10 devices (others coming later) that allows their Quick Share feature to work seamlessly with AirDrop on iPhones, iPads, and Macs.

According to the company's documentation, this implementation will work exactly the same for sharing something from an iPhone to a Pixel, a Pixel to an iPhone, an iPhone to an iPhone, or a Pixel to a Pixel. The one downside here seems to be that, unlike iPhone to iPhone or Android to Android transfers, you can't identify devices on the other platform as familiar devices. Therefore, the receiving device must open itself up temporarily to be available to all devices in the area. Both Quick Share and AirDrop only enabled this permission for 10 minutes before turning it back off. So, it's not a huge security concern, in my opinion. It's more an annoyance. My primary use case for AirDrop is passing files, typically from my iPhone to my iPad or Mac, so this would be annoying for that use case. I don't know if I enabled something special to get this, but when I airdrop from one of my personal devices to another personal device, it doesn't even ask me if I want to accept the file. It just sends it immediately, which is super simple and super nice.

Inexplicably, it is not working in either direction on my personal devices, but I have seen people do it successfully, so I'll chock this up to first day weirdness. Here's hoping it works like a charm sooner rather than later.