Full transcript of “📧 AirDrop 101: Transform How You Share Files!”. Click a timestamp to open the video at that moment. Need another video? Use the YouTube transcript generator.
0:00 If you're still texting and emailing files from your iPhone to your computer or to other people's devices, it's time you learned how to properly use AirDrop. Stick around. I've got you covered. I'm Dylan Stewart, the Mac Whisperer, and in today's video, we're going to demystify AirDrop. Make sure to stick around for my Mac Whisperer power tip because this tool is going to make AirDrop even easier to use and even more valuable. Let's hop on in and get started. What is AirDrop? Well, Airdrop is a built-in networking tool that exists on
0:47 all Apple devices, and it enables you to easily send almost any kind of data from any Apple device to any other Apple device. Imagine that you are at a photo shoot taking hundreds of pictures with your iPhone, and then you come home and you want to transfer all of those photos to your computer. Sure, iCloud synchronizes your photos automatically, but sometimes it takes forever. And especially with videos, it can really slow down your workflow. By using AirDrop, you can send all of those videos and all of those photos directly to your computer easily and quickly. AirDrop doesn't require internet and can send files quickly, even when they're large video files. So whether you're sending photos, documents, address book
1:32 cards, websites, even passwords, you can send almost any kind of content from any Apple device to any other Apple device. So whether you're sending those photos and videos from your phone to your computer, or whether you're at a business conference and you're sending an important document from your iPad to your friend's phone, or whether you're at a family gathering and you're sending something from your phone to somebody else's computer, AirDrop works seamlessly across all Apple devices. All it requires is Wi-Fi and Bluetooth and the person to be in nearby proximity to where you are. This makes it super easy and can prevent you from texting and emailing files between Apple devices. So, now that we understand what AirDrop is and why you might want to use it,
2:19 let's learn how. We're going to pretend that you happen to be at a family gathering and you've taken a bunch of photos and you'd like to share those photos with the members of your family. You're nowhere near Wi-Fi and the cellular signal is a little bit spotty. So, what are you supposed to do? You've got all of these amazing photographs, but getting them to the family members can just be so problematic. Sure, you could create a shared iCloud photo album, but that reduces the quality of the photos and the videos. You could send them via text or email, which is going to take you forever. And with spotty internet and spotty cellular service, they might not even go through. And on top of that, when you send large photos and videos
3:04 via either text or email, it tends to reduce the file size. You want to give the beautiful pictures that you've taken to your family in the highest quality possible. So, how are you supposed to do that via text or email? And on top of all of those issues, there's one other problem with sending things like photos via text and email. And that is when you send it to the other party, they don't always add it to their photo library. I've sent tons and tons of pictures to my dad only to find out that he's left them in the text message stream for years and years, never enjoying them within his photo library. Airdrop solves that problem super simply. Let's watch how we do it. I'm going to click the select button up at the top and I'm just going to select a handful of them. Now, I'm going to click the share button in the lower lefthand corner. Here, we're
3:51 going to see an AirDrop option. This tends to be either one of your own devices or somebody you communicate with frequently. In this case, this is my computer. But when we click on the AirDrop button down below, your device will look in your nearby area for any other Apple devices. Up at the top, you'll find your personal devices. Below that, you'll find devices that belong to people in your network. Here, we can see my wife's phone. And below that, you'll find Apple devices from people outside of your network. In this case, my friend Reggie happens to be in town and his phone's nearby, so my phone can see it. When you click on one of these devices, it will send an invitation to that person's device to accept the content that you're sending over. Let's see how it works. If I click on Reggie's phone right here, we should notice that Reggie
4:39 gets the invitation. And as soon as he accepts it, it takes those photos and it brings them right onto his phone, adding them directly into his photo library. That's one of the best things about AirDrop because it's Apple to Apple. It's smart. It understands where the content is supposed to go. Rather than sending a bunch of photos and leaving them in a text message chain or an email chain, this takes those photos and puts them right inside of the photo library. But it doesn't just work with photos. It works with all kinds of different content. So, for this example, let's step out of photos and let's step into notes. When you have a note that you'd like to share, you can share it in a number of different ways. You can collaborate with
5:26 somebody else on that note, which means that you add that person to your note so that you can both work on the note simultaneously. But in this situation, I just want to send this cool burger recipe over to Reggie, who is desperate for a good burger. I don't really want to collaborate with him. If I don't airdrop it and instead I just click the share button and I send it via text, it takes the text out of the note. It breaks the formatting. It loses all of the photographs and all of the beautiful elements that we've built into this note, making it almost useless. I don't want to send this over to Reggie. It's going to sit in his text message chain and he's never going to make this burger. The other way that you can send notes is you can send them via email. here. It does a little bit of a better job of maintaining the formatting, but
6:13 most people leave emails in email, which means this amazing recipe is going to get buried under all sorts of junk email and it's never going to get cooked. Instead of that, if we simply airdrop this recipe over to Reggie, he's going to get it in his notes app where he can find it and cook it anytime he wants. Let's see how that looks. We'll start by clicking the share button again, and then we'll come right down to AirDrop. There's Reggie's phone right there. I'm going to click on it. We'll see the invitation over here. I'll click accept. It'll take a few moments. And now we're inside of the notes app with this amazing recipe. Airrop solves so many problems because it doesn't require internet. and it knows where the content needs to go. Rather than sticking that
7:00 information into email where it's sure to get lost or dropping it into a long message thread, forcing the recipient to search for it time and time again, it puts the information where it belongs. But it can work in other apps beyond just photos and notes. For this example, let's step out of notes and let's jump right into the files app here. Here I've got a cool smart guide all about iOS 18 notes. And I know that Reggie would love to see that. Right from here, I can click that share button. I can click on the AirDrop button. I can locate Reggie and tap on it. He can click accept. And immediately inside of files, he's
7:45 got that smart guide. And he can take that smart guide and leave it in files or open it right up in the books app just like this. All of a sudden, it's so much easier to share anything from your Apple device to any other Apple device. And again, it works in all sorts of apps, whether it's the address book, sending over a contact card, photos, notes, passwords, or maybe you've got this cool website you'd like to share with somebody. rather than texting or emailing it to them, click the share button, click AirDrop, click on their name, and when they accept it, it'll open up that website right on Safari where they can take action, bookmark it, add it to a tab group or almost anything else. The way it works
8:31 on the phone is the same way that it works on the iPad, but it works a little bit differently on the computer. So, let's hop over to the computer and take a look at AirDrop from the computer. When you're inside of an app like photos, AirDrop works very similarly to how it works on phones and iPads. Simply select the photos that you'd like to send. Click the share button up at the top and from the popup list, click where it says AirDrop. It'll open up an AirDrop screen that will show you all of the available recipients. Simply click on any one of them. They'll get the invitation and the data will be sent over. It works like that in apps like Photos or Safari, but AirDrop works a little differently when you're inside of
9:17 the Finder of your computer. You see on the Finder at the top of your sidebar, you've got an AirDrop section. Clicking on that will have your device look in your area for any available recipients. And when it finds those recipients, all you have to do is click on the file menu and open another Finder window. Point it to what you'd like to share with those recipients. Grab as many files as you want. It's easy to grab multiple files because AirDrop sends things very, very quickly, even if they're large files. And you can take all of those files and simply drag and drop them onto the recipient. The recipient will get an invitation just like before, and once they accept it, those files will move into the appropriate place on their computer. In this case, it opened them up right inside the files app on
10:02 Reggie's phone. It makes it so easy to do it from the computer because you can leave the AirDrop screen open and drag one file after another, including photos, including documents, including websites, pretty much anything. But there's a secret power tip that we're going to drop right here, which will make AirDrop from the computer even easier. You see, on the computer, we have a toolbar at the top of our Finder. And there's all sorts of tools that are here, but you can customize your toolbar by clicking on the view menu and coming down to where it says customize toolbar. You'll get additional options. And one of the best options is the AirDrop option, which you can simply click on and drag up to your toolbar right here. Now, when you're inside of any file, you can jump right into the AirDrop section to send it easily and quickly. You can
10:49 also airdrop things on the computer by right-clicking on them and coming down to the share screen here or you can choose Airdrop mail messages or other methods. But it makes it so easy to just have that AirDrop button right at the top of your toolbar and suddenly you're just one step away from airdropping any file to any Apple device. So now that we understand what Airdrop is, what you can use it for, what kind of documents or files you can send via AirDrop, and how to do it on the phone and computer, let's talk about troubleshooting AirDrop. Because sometimes AirDrop doesn't work properly, and it's usually one of three problems that create the issue. The
11:35 first problem is that your devices have to have both Bluetooth and Wi-Fi turned on. So, if you're having trouble with Airdropping, the first thing you want to do on your phone is pull down from the upper right hand corner and go into your control panel. Confirm that both Bluetooth and Wi-Fi are turned on. The Wi-Fi doesn't have to be connected to a Wi-Fi signal. It just needs to be active. If you're unsure, press and hold in this section here and double check that both the Bluetooth symbol is lit up and the Wi-Fi symbol is lit up on your computer. The best way to do that is to open up system settings and click on the Wi-Fi section and confirm that it's turned on here and click on Bluetooth and confirm that it's turned on there. If both Wi-Fi and Bluetooth are turned on, the problem's usually somewhere
12:21 else. As a default on mobile devices, AirDrop is only available for people that you have in your address book. Which means if you're at a business conference and you want to share your address book card with someone you've never met before, you may need to make a small change on your device. To do that, pull down from the upper right corner to get into your control panel. And from this section, press and hold on your networking tools and where it says AirDrop, if it says contacts only, which is the default setting, you're going to click on that and choose everyone for 10 minutes instead. Now, unfortunately, you can't leave it set to everyone on mobile devices. This is for security and prevents random people from sending you random files all the time, but on the
13:07 computer, you can leave it on perpetually. To check your AirDrop settings on the computer, open the Finder, click on the AirDrop section, and down at the bottom, confirm whether it's set to no one, contacts only, or everyone. On the computer, if you set it to everyone, it'll stay on that. But on the phone and the iPad, it will revert to contacts only after 10 minutes. So, if you've got your Bluetooth and your Wi-Fi on and your AirDrop is set to everyone, you should be good to go. AirDrop's just amazing. It can allow you to send almost any content from any Apple device to any other Apple device. Even if that content is a super large video file, it can transfer without internet from one device to the other, usually faster than you can transmit it
13:52 even with a cord. But there's just one more thing I want to talk about before I drop my Mac Whisper Power Tip. If you got great value from this lesson and you're super excited to start using AirDrop, give this video a thumbs up. that makes it easier for other people to find it and it goes a long way. And if you've got a question, a comment, something you don't understand, something you want to share or something you want to know more about, drop it down in the comments section. I love my YouTube community and I absolutely love to hear from you guys. And if you haven't subscribed to my channel yet, that's like leaving AirDrop connected to nobody. Click that subscribe button and that notify bell so that we can airdrop between each other anytime we want. And with that being said, let's go ahead and airdrop in the power tip.
14:39 Airdrop's absolutely mind-blowing when you learn how to fully use it. It makes it so easy to send things between people. But in today's power tip, we're going to talk about a couple of ways that makes it even more powerful. You see, in addition to using AirDrop by clicking the share button, you can also use it by holding two phones near to each other. And for this, we're going to go into the passwords app. Think about how often you need to share one of your passwords with a loved one or a friend. Whether it's a password to your Netflix or a password to your Wi-Fi. And inside Apple's Passwords app, it's easy to use AirDrop to share things. I'm going to open up this password and click the AirDrop button up above. But rather than pressing any buttons, I'm going to take my phone and his phone and hold them close to each
15:25 other like this. you'll get this awesome graphic and you'll send the file directly from one phone to the other. But when we're dealing with passwords, there's a little problem here. As you can see on this screen, it says that it's unable to complete the airdrop because in order to share passwords between two recipients, they have to be in each other's address book. That's a smart security setting that makes sure you don't accidentally send your password to some random passer by. And it could be really problematic to add the address book card for both recipients. But that's where the next power tip comes in. And that's a new feature called Namerop. With Namerop, if you take two phones,
16:10 even without any apps open at all, and hold them next to each other, you will get an invitation to add each other's address book cards. All you have to do is click on the share button to share yours and the share button on the other person's phone and immediately you will add each other's address book cards right in super simply and super easily. Which means now when we come back into the passwords app and go to share that exact same password, we can bring the two devices near each other just like this. And immediately Reggie's got my sample password and I didn't have to text or email it or worry about any kind of security. Airdrop makes it simple and
16:58 holding the two phones on top of each other makes it instantaneous. So, that's what we've got for today's lesson, all about how to use AirDrop to share content from one Apple device to another. I hope you learned a ton, but hey, there's always more to learn. Check out this video over here for even more amazing Apple tips and tricks to make your technology work for you instead of the other way around. I'm Dylan Stewart, the Mac Whisperer, and I'll see you in the comments.
