iPhone 13 Pro Airdrop doesn’t work on new iPhone 13s

[gadget_guy]

Oh boy, sounds like some AirDrop tomfoolery.

When you tap person from people, every one of her devices that is in range and unlock should receive a notification to accept or decline the air drop. She can then choose to accept it from which device she would like. When I send from my work phone to me under People (different AppleID's for privacy) I get a notification on my iPhone, iMac, MBP and iPad all at the same time...its weird but I rarely have all of them on at the same time.

Below people you have devices, those are YOUR devices or at least should be. This is for you to transfer files between your own devices.

Good luck getting this sorted out, head hurts thinking about it. What I can say is go into Settings > AppleID (your name at the top). Scroll down to devices and make sure those are only yours, if there is a device you don't use anymore especially if its shared then remove it and have the person using it use their AppleID. Then scroll back up and tap "Name, Phone Numbers, Email" make sure those emails and phone numbers are yours, remove emails and numbers you don't use.

Then do the same to her phone. I'm sure she's not fed up with you messing with her phone by now...lol

If you guys are sharing Apps then set up a family plan. It gives BETTER benefits then sharing an AppleID IMO. Hopefully those apps are still available in the store for download.

I had a shared email address between both my personal and work AppleID's and for some reason this carried over a lot of data. I wasn't logged into anything with either address it was just an extra but since they were shared it associated my full name, address, phone number, profile picture, etc...Again this email wasn't being used to sign into anything it was just on my AppleID as an extra one. Once I removed it from my personal account the work account forgot all that data. Unfortunately I didn't try AirDrop but there is a good chance it would have associated that email to me and made the work phone part of "my devices".

Hopefully that helps some. Good luck!

I'll take a look at some of these things again. I did check both appleID's earlier thinking same thing as you maybe there was something that should not be there or something missing. All seemed in order though. We do have a family plan and have had that since they started.

We both had iPhone 11 Pro's and those airdropped fine. we activated the new 13 Pro Max. I used phone to phone transfer option for hers and for mine I used iCloud to migrate mine. It should have brought over all settings as they were on the 11's.

I noticed only when I set our airdrop to EVERYONE I can see her specific device and airdrop. If I set both ours to contacts only she shows up in people (and I do for her people) but either one of us cannot get a prompt to accept the incoming airdrop file via the People option. Only works when set to everyone and we choose specific device vs person.

I'm going to double check though the things you said to look at and remove any superfluous numbers or emails.

 

[diamond.g]

I'll take a look at some of these things again. I did check both appleID's earlier thinking same thing as you maybe there was something that should not be there or something missing. All seemed in order though. We do have a family plan and have had that since they started.

We both had iPhone 11 Pro's and those airdropped fine. we activated the new 13 Pro Max. I used phone to phone transfer option for hers and for mine I used iCloud to migrate mine. It should have brought over all settings as they were on the 11's.

I noticed only when I set our airdrop to EVERYONE I can see her specific device and airdrop. If I set both ours to contacts only she shows up in people (and I do for her people) but either one of us cannot get a prompt to accept the incoming airdrop file via the People option. Only works when set to everyone and we choose specific device vs person.

I'm going to double check though the things you said to look at and remove any superfluous numbers or emails.

This is pretty much the same problem my wife and I have.

 

[gadget_guy]

I'm stumped. Only thing I have not tried is a complete wipe reset of phone and restore from scratch. Not optimistic that will help though. My old iPhone 11's still airdrop to each other. I fired them up to test them out. I then fully signed out of cloud on the 11's, disabled find iPhone and did reset on those to prepare for trade in hoping that something that may have existed in them still being in our iCloud account could have been causing this. That made no difference either.

 

[cynics]

Its a new iPhone, call Apple support. They might actually be able to help in this situation...

 

[gadget_guy]

Its a new iPhone, call Apple support. They might actually be able to help in this situation...

Spent some time on phone with Apple support. Gave them details and logs of both phones. Hopefully engineers can find the bug. As former programmer my guesses are:

sending phone is acting as if it is sending but is in fact not sending.
Receiving phone is receiving request but never prompts user to accept or decline file
Sending phone is sending but receiving phone never acknowledges receipt of the send so no prompt triggered

will post back once I hear from them. It was escalated to a senior level engineer

 

[nixpixie]

I am having the same problem and it's driving me nuts because I use airdrop from my iphone to my Mac a lot. I have had this start as soon as I got my new iphone 13Pro (which is currently on iOS 15.0). My Mac has not changed, it's still on v10.15.7. My husband got the same new iphone model at the same time as me, and his airdrop works.

I have tried everything discussed here in this post - many times. The only thing I have not done yet is update my iOS to the latest 15.0.2. Seems others who have done that still have the problem, so... ?

On my iphone 13Pro I see my Mac under "Devices" as a choice for Airdrop. But if I choose it, it gives the "waiting" message and then nothing happens. The photo(s) should show up in my Mac's downloads folder. Just in case, per someone's reply here, I did look around my user Library, the system Library, the Photos app, etc. No new jpg files anywhere.

On my Mac I do not see my iphone show up as a choice for airdrop. That seems like it must be indicative of the issue, since I should see my iphone there (my settings are currently set to "everyone" on both Mac and iphone).

I've googled all over and this post with the info from others matches my problem exactly.

I actually registered for an account so I could post this as FYI for others and to keep any eye out to hear what @gadget_guy learns from Apple. I was just about to throw in the towel and contact them myself. I'll wait to see what is posted here first and let you know if that also fixes my problem.

Thanks so much for the help from all of you here!
cheers!

 

[gadget_guy]

I am having the same problem and it's driving me nuts because I use airdrop from my iphone to my Mac a lot. I have had this start as soon as I got my new iphone 13Pro (which is currently on iOS 15.0). My Mac has not changed, it's still on v10.15.7. My husband got the same new iphone model at the same time as me, and his airdrop works.

I have tried everything discussed here in this post - many times. The only thing I have not done yet is update my iOS to the latest 15.0.2. Seems others who have done that still have the problem, so... ?

On my iphone 13Pro I see my Mac under "Devices" as a choice for Airdrop. But if I choose it, it gives the "waiting" message and then nothing happens. The photo(s) should show up in my Mac's downloads folder. Just in case, per someone's reply here, I did look around my user Library, the system Library, the Photos app, etc. No new jpg files anywhere.

On my Mac I do not see my iphone show up as a choice for airdrop. That seems like it must be indicative of the issue, since I should see my iphone there (my settings are currently set to "everyone" on both Mac and iphone).

I've googled all over and this post with the info from others matches my problem exactly.

I actually registered for an account so I could post this as FYI for others and to keep any eye out to hear what @gadget_guy learns from Apple. I was just about to throw in the towel and contact them myself. I'll wait to see what is posted here first and let you know if that also fixes my problem.

Thanks so much for the help from all of you here!
cheers!

Just got off phone with apple upper level engineer. They looked through all my logs and just requested a screen recording of the behavior I (and others like you) have described. I just did that and sent them the videos of the bug from my iPhone. Apple Support said she is forwarding to the engineering team and will reach out as soon as they identify the issue or if they need any additional data/info. Will keep all posted here as soon as I hear anything.

 

[nixpixie]

Just got off phone with apple upper level engineer. They looked through all my logs and just requested a screen recording of the behavior I (and others like you) have described. I just did that and sent them the videos of the bug from my iPhone. Apple Support said she is forwarding to the engineering team and will reach out as soon as they identify the issue or if they need any additional data/info. Will keep all posted here as soon as I hear anything.

This is really strange - I had to reboot (power off/on) my iphone 13 Pro for an unrelated reason. Changing nothing else at all, my airdrop suddenly worked between my iphone and my Mac(!). I had just tried airdrop again out of frustration because I had a number of videos I wanted to drop over - and violá - it worked! I have no helpful explanations to add to the above thread, since I had already done everything mentioned in all these posts and of course had rebooted my phone plenty of times while trying things out.

I will be very interested in what you learn from Apple, since this is clearly an issue. But I wanted to let you know that it suddenly is working for me. If it stops working, I'll let you know!

PS - Yes, I was still on iOS 15.0 when I rebooted and airdrop started working. Yesterday, I updated to 15.0.2 and it still works. Whew!
cheers,
c-

 

[gadget_guy]

This is really strange - I had to reboot (power off/on) my iphone 13 Pro for an unrelated reason. Changing nothing else at all, my airdrop suddenly worked between my iphone and my Mac(!). I had just tried airdrop again out of frustration because I had a number of videos I wanted to drop over - and violá - it worked! I have no helpful explanations to add to the above thread, since I had already done everything mentioned in all these posts and of course had rebooted my phone plenty of times while trying things out.

I will be very interested in what you learn from Apple, since this is clearly an issue. But I wanted to let you know that it suddenly is working for me. If it stops working, I'll let you know!

PS - Yes, I was still on iOS 15.0 when I rebooted and airdrop started working. Yesterday, I updated to 15.0.2 and it still works. Whew!
cheers,
c-

That's great that yours worked. I have not had the issue of dropping files to my own mac. Only to my wife's new 13 Pro max or hers to mine. I can drop to her iPad or mac and she can do same to mine. Just iPhone to iPhone I am seeing this issue and only since we upgraded from the 11's to the 13's.

Another possible related bug I discovered is I can see her device under "Find My" app in the Devices section but under "People" it says No Location Found. It finds my sons iPhone 11 fine still and very quickly. I can see her location under the devices though which searches for device vs "People". Could possibly be related. I was however able to see her location when she got home under "People". Not sure if the API's are shared for a person's iCloud account for use in FindMy and Airdrop. If so that could point to the issue.

I heard back from apple support and they had me delete AdGuard and OpenVPN from my phone. I did that and tested but no success with AirDrop. Waiting for support to get back to me now with next step.

 

[diamond.g]

That's great that yours worked. I have not had the issue of dropping files to my own mac. Only to my wife's new 13 Pro max or hers to mine. I can drop to her iPad or mac and she can do same to mine. Just iPhone to iPhone I am seeing this issue and only since we upgraded from the 11's to the 13's.

Another possible related bug I discovered is I can see her device under "Find My" app in the Devices section but under "People" it says No Location Found. It finds my sons iPhone 11 fine still and very quickly. I can see her location under the devices though which searches for device vs "People". Could possibly be related. I was however able to see her location when she got home under "People". Not sure if the API's are shared for a person's iCloud account for use in FindMy and Airdrop. If so that could point to the issue.

I heard back from apple support and they had me delete AdGuard and OpenVPN from my phone. I did that and tested but no success with AirDrop. Waiting for support to get back to me now with next step.

My wife (and her new phone) show up under Find My, but not under Air Drop (her phone shows up separately and doesn’t appear to be assigned to her). Same issue for my phone.

 

[05Moose]

Same problem here since I got the iPhone 13 Pro in September. Now on iOS 15.1.1 and still not fixed. Airdrop works fine with my wife’s iPhone 13 Pro. But with my daughter’s iPhone 12, it just won’t work. She can see me and send, but I never get the popup to accept it. From my end, I cannot see her at all when I try to send something. Just doesn’t make sense. Hope they find and fix the issue. It’s been months since I reported the problem.

 

[05Moose]

Same problem here since I got the iPhone 13 Pro in September. Now on iOS 15.1.1 and still not fixed. Airdrop works fine with my wife’s iPhone 13 Pro. But with my daughter’s iPhone 12, it just won’t work. She can see me and send, but I never get the popup to accept it. From my end, I cannot see her at all when I try to send something. Just doesn’t make sense. Hope they find and fix the issue. It’s been months since I reported the problem.

FYI, we discovered tonight that they fixed part of it. While the old airdrop method required WiFi to be on only. With my daughter’s phone, it does work if we’re on the same wireless network. If we’re not on a network, it doesn’t work. Seems their point-to-point wifi has an incorrect dependency built in now.

Edit: Through more experimentation, it appears to now work even when no longer connected. Weird because it wouldn’t work at all this morning, and now it’s all good. No changes to either phone since this morning.

 

[atxyde]

Today I got a new iPhone 13 Pro for my wife. After transferring all her data from the old iPhone to the new one, I tried to share some pictures from my iPhone 13 Pro Max over AirDrop but I confronted the same situation. The only way to send a picture over AirDrop was to set the receiving iPhone to Everyone. I tried singing out/in the Apple Id and did a network settings reset on both phone, but the problem persisted. I figured out that for some reason, my wife’s contact is not related to the new phone yet because her device name appeared in the AirDrop along with her contact name. So, I updated her contact on my device and my contact on hers. Also, checked all devices in Find My app. I don’t know of this caused to make ir work but I started to work after a while. Now I can share anything between both iPhones without setting the devices to Everyone.

 

[mlody]

Family of 4, 4 iPhones, (X, 11 Pro Max, 12 Pro, 13 Pro) latest iOS and same problems across all of them. Airdrop among our own devices works fine, meaning if I want to airdrop a picture to my mac or if my wife wants to airdrop a pic to her iPad; however, AirDrop between different individuals is not working when receiving is set to Contacts only - this used to works just fine for all of us all the time.

Here is what we discovered when troubleshooting this - setting AirDrop to Everyone does not work under all conditions. If you review the AirDrop screen, it has three sections, PEOPLE, DEVICES, and OTHER PEOPLE. Even with AirDrop set to Everyone, when you select a person from under the PEOPLE section, it wont work. The only way that AirDrop works is if you actually select a specific device under the DEVICES section.

This leads me to believe that something is broke with Contacts or how AirDrop reads/check Contacts before initiating and allowing the transfers.

I am honestly getting sick and tired of this BS. Why is it that basic stuff always gets broken each time a new major iOS is released? Since Apple will now continue to support existing iOS and wont force people to the latest version, this is the last time we are jumping to the new major release on day 1. We are going to hold of even for 6 months if needed to make sure things are working as I spend more time and effort to troubleshoot all this crap then actually using it.

 

[AbSoluTc]

Boyfriend just got a new 13 Pro. Since then we cannot airdrop between each other. I have a 13 Pro Max. We both caN send/receive from my iPhone 11 work phone.

He was testing during me typing this and figured it out. If he taps me under people for airdrop even though His phone sees me, it doesn’t work. If we go to air drop and then tap our phones, it works.

Not sure why it does one and not the other?

 

[yukari]

I have no problem with airdrop between 13 mini, original SE, 13 pro and iphone 5.
Make sure you have both wifi and bluetooth turned on. The phones need to be on the same wifi.

 

[mlody]

I have no problem with airdrop between 13 mini, original SE, 13 pro and iphone 5.
Make sure you have both wifi and bluetooth turned on. The phones need to be on the same wifi.

Your last statement is incorrect. The phones dont have to be on any WiFi for AirDrop to work, but they have to be within the Bluetooth and WiFi range.