MP 1,1-5,1 AirDrop not appearing in sidebar - not supported?

[rm5]

Yet another problem with the 5,1 Mac Pro (three posts in 24 hours).

AirDrop does not appear in the Finder sidebar, and it also is not an option in the "Sidebar" tab of Finder preferences. Is AirDrop somehow not supported on this machine, or could it be because I'm using an unsupported OS (Catalina).

As always, any help greatly appreciated!

 

[avro707]

For this you need to update the bluetooth/wifi in the old Mac Pro 5,1 to a newer one. Like this:

Classic Mac Pro (5,1): Upgrade Wi-Fi to 802.11ac and Bluetooth to 4.0 - CrystalIDEA Blog

crystalidea.com

I've done that on my Mac Pro 5,1 machines, they work well with it.

I was using MacOS Big Sur or Monterey for this. To do the upgrade requires pulling the machine apart and connecting the bluetooth antenna very carefully, the tiny little cables are a pain to connect.