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AirDrop friends only. Will this work?

K

kendo88

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Jun 22, 2010
254
123
Coventry
Somebody please correct me if I'm wrong. I believe the way airdrop currently works is that, if you have it set to friends only, then you can only share something with somebody who has your Apple ID email address saved under your contact in their phone and vice versa.

I dunno about you guys and the general public, but most of my friends won't have my Apple ID saved in their phone. Would it not be more logical to work like iMessage and have it apply to Apple ID OR phone number.

Having to set airdrop to everyone just to send one picture to somebody doesn't seem like the right solution.

Thoughts?
 
good question, I am wondering the same thing. Is it the email address that makes it work or the phone number? I am testing it out now with a colleague and fellow developer and its not working at all even though we have ourselves in each others address book but maybe with the wrong email address.
 
I remember Craig saying that it scans for iOS 7 devices, so no number or Apple ID required.
 
CarlosQG said:
I remember Craig saying that it scans for iOS 7 devices, so no number or Apple ID required.
Click to expand...

Not even close to the question at hand. He's asking how it will determine which of those devices belong to your friends vs. strangers.
 
To expand a bit more. When I try this with somebody with ios 7, who has my phone number saved in their contacts, we have to switch airdrop to everyone, friends only doesn't bring anything up. I'm going to test it further with adding email addresses to contact info, but if this is the case, I'm going to find airdrop pretty useless and will have to switch to everyone if I want to send files around. Not so seamless
 
I'm not running iOS 7, so I can't test this right now. However, I assumed that phone number/email matching would be the only sane way to do this without making the feature practically useless. Just had a look on the Apple website and while it's vague on details, it does say that the feature 'requires an iCloud account'. My guess is that if it's not working now, it's going to require that Apple flick a switch near the end of the beta process to turn it on to do something like invisibly tag your contacts in the server-side way that certain phone numbers and email addresses are marked as having iMessage/FaceTime.

I remember an earlier iOS beta (5 or 6, maybe?) where iCloud app data, which was a new feature, got cleared of data partway through the beta period. Apple had to warn all devs in advance in case they happened to have stored anything important in there. If they have to mess with people's contacts, I imagine they'll want to avoid having to do it more than once.
 
Tried it by making sure Apple ID was saved in contacts, still didn't work. Something must change before release...... I hope
 
kendo88 said:
Somebody please correct me if I'm wrong. I believe the way airdrop currently works is that, if you have it set to friends only, then you can only share something with somebody who has your Apple ID email address saved under your contact in their phone and vice versa.

I dunno about you guys and the general public, but most of my friends won't have my Apple ID saved in their phone. Would it not be more logical to work like iMessage and have it apply to Apple ID OR phone number.

Having to set airdrop to everyone just to send one picture to somebody doesn't seem like the right solution.

Thoughts?
Click to expand...

Does it actually say that it requires an Apple ID? It just says people in your contacts. So maybe it does also recognise phone numbers?
 
virginblue4 said:
Does it actually say that it requires an Apple ID? It just says people in your contacts. So maybe it does also recognise phone numbers?
Click to expand...

The release notes say so:
Contacts Only support requires that:
You are logged in to iCloud.
The sender and receiver have each other’s Apple ID email addresses in Contacts on their devices.
 
kendo88 said:
Somebody please correct me if I'm wrong. I believe the way airdrop currently works is that, if you have it set to friends only, then you can only share something with somebody who has your Apple ID email address saved under your contact in their phone and vice versa.

I dunno about you guys and the general public, but most of my friends won't have my Apple ID saved in their phone. Would it not be more logical to work like iMessage and have it apply to Apple ID OR phone number.

Having to set airdrop to everyone just to send one picture to somebody doesn't seem like the right solution.

Thoughts?
Click to expand...

It uses your contacts and associated I.ds just like FaceTime and iMessage does.
 
kendo88 said:
Does it work for you though? I know it should work like that, can't get it to though
Click to expand...

Works fine for me messing around with 5 other devices. It was glitchy In b2&3 but is a lot better now
 
By creating an email with iCloud as the label in contacts I was able to see the pictures of the contact and view the contact via view contacts only
 
I'm not sure if this is correct as it has been a while since I tried using Airdrop (not many around me that have iOS 7), but when my brother was in town we tried it out and I want to say I had better success when wifi and bluetooth were on. I'm not sure if bluetooth has anything to do with it, but if I didn't have it on it didn't work at all. Maybe someone can try it out.

I can try once I get home and post back.
 
bluedukies8 said:
I'm not sure if this is correct as it has been a while since I tried using Airdrop (not many around me that have iOS 7), but when my brother was in town we tried it out and I want to say I had better success when wifi and bluetooth were on. I'm not sure if bluetooth has anything to do with it, but if I didn't have it on it didn't work at all. Maybe someone can try it out.

I can try once I get home and post back.
Click to expand...

Bluetooth has to be on to use Airdrop. If you try to use it with it off it turns it on.
 
(crosspost from the other iOS AirDrop thread)

Does anyone here actually KNOW what the requirements are? I tried several scenarios yesterday without consistent results, which leaves me puzzled:
  • Both me and my wife have each other (along with the other's Apple ID) in our contacts on the iPhone / iPad. However, these contacts are Google-synced CardDAV accounts. With AirDrop set to Friends Only, we cannot see each other. With AirDrop set to All, we can see each other, but with no contact photo or initials.
  • Subsequently, I turned on iCloud Contacts and populated our respective iCloud Address Book with the other's contact data including the Apple ID. Now first AirDrop (with visibility set to All) showed the contact photos, but after a few seconds the photos disappeared any only the respective initials were shown ("HS" or "WS")
Btw my wife and I both use the same Apple ID for iTunes, Photostream, Documents, FindMyPhone, Backup etc., but a second individual ID for Reminders and Friends. None is used for Contacts or Mail, but for my tests I added the contact details and IDs (2nd bullet point above) to each individual's contacts and turned Contact sync on only for the individual account.

Anyway, couldn't make any sense out of it, and didn't want to spend more time on trying this out with far too many variables...

But maybe there is someone smarter or with more knowledge out here...
 
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