Samsung adds Air Drop to more Galaxy devices — but users say there’s a big catch | Tech Radar

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Samsung adds Air Drop to more Galaxy devices — but users say there’s a big catch

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Samsung seems to be adding Air Drop to older Galaxy devices

It follows Air Drop coming to the Samsung Galaxy S26 series

The feature lets Android users share files to and from i OS products

Apple is well-known for locking down key features of its i OS operating system and preventing them from spreading to rival devices, but recently cracks have begun to appear. Although this could mean easier file sharing for certain Android users, there’s a significant catch to be aware of.

First, Google announced that it had got Apple’s Air Drop sharing feature working on Android. Then, earlier in March, the news broke that Samsung was adding Air Drop compatibility to its Galaxy S26 series. Now, that’s extended to more Samsung devices, including the Galaxy Z Fold 7, Galaxy S22, Galaxy S23, Galaxy S24 and Galaxy S25.

In case you’re not aware, Apple’s Air Drop tool lets you quickly and securely share files between two Apple devices. You can share from one i Phone to another, between an i Pad and a Mac, or any combination thereof. There’s no file compression and you can lock it down to just people in your contacts, preventing unwanted file sharing.

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For years, Air Drop has been an Apple exclusive. That all changed in late 2025, however, when Google revealed it had brought Air Drop to Android — presumably without Apple’s express permission, given how protective Apple is over its features and how the company did not make a joint announcement with Google. While that may have led some observers to question how long Air Drop would remain on Android, it seems that it’s actually expanding — at least for the time being.

Yet instead of being a like-for-like Air Drop add-on for all the best Android phones, Samsung’s implementation works as an extension to the existing Quick Share feature. That means the option to share items with i Phone users appears within Quick Share, not as a separate tool or app. That helps keep things simple while adding cross-platform compatibility.

But before you get too excited at the new feature on your Android phone, there’s a slight hitch: the feature might not be fully operational yet.

For example, in a Samsung community support thread and underneath a post by Android pundit Tarun Vats on X, several users claimed that although they saw an option to use Air Drop on their Samsung phones, the feature did not actually work.

Other users said the option to send files to i Phone users via Air Drop was absent from their devices, even after installing the Quick Share update. That’s reminiscent of Google’s Air Drop implementation, which was similarly buggy.

However, not everyone is struggling. Over on Reddit, plenty of people stated that the feature had appeared and that it was working for them after testing. It therefore appears that there’s a strong element of luck deciding whether or not you see the feature, and if you do, whether or not it actually works for you.

That suggests that Samsung is still ironing out the creases in its Air Drop implementation. We’ll have to see whether it gets fixed — and whether it spreads to other Android devices before too long.

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Alex Blake has been fooling around with computers since the early 1990s, and since that time he's learned a thing or two about tech. No more than two things, though. That's all his brain can hold. As well as Tech Radar, Alex writes for i More, Digital Trends and Creative Bloq, among others. He was previously commissioning editor at Mac Format magazine. That means he mostly covers the world of Apple and its latest products, but also Windows, computer peripherals, mobile apps, and much more beyond. When not writing, you can find him hiking the English countryside and gaming on his PC.

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• Samsung adds Air Drop to more Galaxy devices — but users say there’s a big catch