I have an MBP M5 Max and it refuses to be seen by any other Mac devices. I've tried iPhone, iPad, etc...all of those devices show up on the MBP and I can send items from the laptop to them...but the laptop will not show up at all for any of the other devices. I've tried to turn off/turn on the blue tooth/airdrop connection, I've made sure it's open to "everyone", etc...and no luck. Any ideas what I can try next? I really need to send files to my laptop and it's frustrating I can't do it the fastest and easiest way possible.
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Airdrop will not receive on MacBook Pro M5
- Thread starter delsoul
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FreakinEurekan
macrumors G3
Firewall is worth trying but the asymmetric "I can see them, they can't see me" pattern is almost always AWDL on the receiving side stuck on the wrong Wi-Fi channel. AirDrop advertisement rides AWDL over a specific 5 GHz channel and if your MBP is currently connected to a 6 GHz Wi-Fi 6E/7 network, the radio can't back down to advertise on the AWDL channel until the current connection releases.
Two things that fix it for me on my 16" M3 Max:
1. In Wi-Fi settings, force the MBP onto the 5 GHz SSID (or temporarily turn Wi-Fi off then back on with the phone's hotspot as an easy way to break the current channel binding). Then reopen the Finder AirDrop window on the receiving Mac before triggering the send.
2. If that doesn't do it, sudo ifconfig awdl0 down && sudo ifconfig awdl0 up in Terminal — this kicks the AWDL interface without a full reboot and the discovery beacon comes back within a few seconds.
If neither works, the third culprit is usually that the receiving Mac's Bluetooth is technically "on" but the daemon has hung; System Settings → Bluetooth toggle off/on tends to clear that.
Two things that fix it for me on my 16" M3 Max:
1. In Wi-Fi settings, force the MBP onto the 5 GHz SSID (or temporarily turn Wi-Fi off then back on with the phone's hotspot as an easy way to break the current channel binding). Then reopen the Finder AirDrop window on the receiving Mac before triggering the send.
2. If that doesn't do it, sudo ifconfig awdl0 down && sudo ifconfig awdl0 up in Terminal — this kicks the AWDL interface without a full reboot and the discovery beacon comes back within a few seconds.
If neither works, the third culprit is usually that the receiving Mac's Bluetooth is technically "on" but the daemon has hung; System Settings → Bluetooth toggle off/on tends to clear that.
MacCheetah3
macrumors 68040
Have you (shut down and) restarted all involved devices? That is, both Macs and router/access point. Yes, it's that longstanding, basic, traditional troubleshooters fix, and it has been carried forward for a valid reason. Wireless discovery, or rather any connection/link system, can be very fickle. Basically, again, if you haven't tried a couple of reboots, I'd strongly recommend not skipping that step.
