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Comment by taimurshasan | Hacker News Reader

This project is great. Hopefully one day AirDrop is liberated too. https://github.com/seemoo-lab/opendrop looked promising, but it seems stale. maybe one day.

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This was solved a little while ago.

https://www.android.com/quick-share/

For a very limited subset of Android devices

https://support.google.com/android/answer/9286773#zippy=%2Cf....

The only limit I see there is Android OS 6+. That's not exactly a significant limit.

Here are the relevant passages: https://i.imgur.com/cIMIyao.png

Is that implementation open-source? I'm sure it's bundled as part of Google Play, not AOSP.

Looks like you're right. They built it in rust and embedded it in Google Play services. Booo.

https://blog.google/security/android-quick-share-support-for...

If you don't mind installing an app for it, LocalSend or LANDrop are great for this.

People mention these tools each time AirDrop comes out, and they're not at all compatible.

AirDrop allows two devices to find each other and establish a temporary network to exchange data.

LocalSend and all similar tools require that you first set up a network, have both devices join it, _and then_ handles the final portion of the exchange. The key aspect of AirDrop is that it automates all the overhead.

The open/standard equivalent for AirDrop is Wi-Fi Aware (aka: Neighbor Awareness Networking), which still lacks software support.

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