SEOUL, March 23, 2026, 19:32 KST
Samsung Electronics began rolling out AirDrop compatibility to its Galaxy S26 series on Monday through Quick Share, giving users a direct way to send photos, videos and other files to nearby iPhones. The update starts in South Korea and will expand to other markets, the company said. 1
The change matters because short-range file sharing has remained one of the nagging gaps between Android and Apple devices. Quick Share is Android’s nearby file-transfer feature; Google first opened that bridge on the Pixel 10 line late last year, and Samsung is now the second Android smartphone brand to offer it. 2
Samsung said AirDrop support will initially be limited to the Galaxy S26 series, with additional Galaxy devices to be named later. The company listed Europe, Hong Kong, Japan, Latin America, North America, Southeast Asia and Taiwan for the wider rollout, while Yonhap said other major markets, including the United States and Europe, would start getting the service on Wednesday. 3
The feature was not live when the S26 line launched earlier this month, even though Samsung had already signaled it was coming. “We plan to support AirDrop compatibility starting with the Galaxy S26 series… It will be provided sequentially through software updates,” Choi Won-jun, chief operating officer of Samsung’s mobile business, said at a press conference in Japan, according to 9to5Google, which cited Korean publication EBN. 4
On Samsung devices, the option is not turned on by default. Users have to go into Quick Share and switch on “Share with Apple devices,” while Apple users need to set AirDrop to “Everyone for 10 Minutes” — Apple’s temporary setting that makes a device visible to nearby senders and then times out. 5
That puts Samsung alongside Google’s Pixel line in offering direct AirDrop compatibility on Android. Google’s Pixel 10 phones got the feature in November and Pixel 9 devices followed in February; Eric Kay, Google’s vice president of engineering for Android, said last month the company had worked to make Quick Share compatible “not only with iPhone but iPads and MacBooks” and that more Android announcements were coming “very soon.” 6
Google also pitched security as a selling point when it launched the feature on Pixel. Dave Kleidermacher, Google’s vice president for platforms security and privacy, wrote that the connection was direct and peer-to-peer, while Stanford cryptography professor Dan Boneh called it “a strong example of how to build secure interoperability.” 7
Oppo has also said its Find X9 series will bring AirDrop over Quick Share in March, a sign the feature is starting to move beyond Google’s own hardware. The company said users would be able to transfer files between Oppo phones and iOS, iPadOS and macOS devices without installing third-party apps. 8
But the update still comes with limits. Samsung said availability may vary by market, and Google’s current Quick Share bridge works with AirDrop’s broader “Everyone for 10 minutes” mode rather than Apple’s contacts-only setting. That could leave the experience less smooth than sharing inside Apple’s own hardware lineup, especially for users who do not want to make their devices temporarily visible to nearby strangers. 9
