For years, Android phones and tablets didn’t have anything like Apple’s AirDrop feature. The technology allowed iPhone owners to share files, photos, videos, or basically anything between them on a whim by just bringing the phones together a short bit. Then, Google came out with its own solution called Nearby Share on Android, which works on pretty much every Android phone by this point. Now, Google is renaming the technology to Quick Share and merging it with Samsung’s similar feature.
First off, the big news.Nearby Shareis now Quick Share. At CES 2024, Google announced that the file-sharing bridge will be renamed across Android phones, with Quick Share now taking over. If this is not your first time hearing the Quick Share name, that’s probably because that’s the name that Samsung’s seemingly identical solution, which worked across Samsung phones, tablets, and PCs. Google and Samsung are merging both services, with the unified service keeping the name of Quick Share.
You shouldn’t expect any major changes in functionality aside from the name change, it’s still primarily for sending photos, videos, and other files between nearby Android phones and tablets. The service also still works with Chromebooks, andGoogle’s Nearby Share app for Windows PCswill presumably still work.
One big thing that’s changing right now is that Google is looking to make Quick Share work with more devices out of the box. As previously mentioned, there is a Windows app that allows you to use the service on Windows 10 and Windows 11 computers, but Google has announced that it’s also looking to partner with OEMs such as LG to pre-load Quick Share on laptops. It should be noted that Microsoft already has file-sharing functionality built into the OS, similarly called Nearby sharing, that works for sharing files between Windows computers, so Microsoft might not want to give that up for Google’s service.
Google says that the new Quick Share experience will roll out to users next month. It’s not clear when PCs with Quick Share preintsalled will arrive, but you candownload the existing Nearby Share appyourself on any Windows 10 or 11 PC with a 64-bit x86 processor.
