Google’s Quick Share for Android that allows users to quickly share files between devices is a handy tool that has moved beyond just an Android-to-Android file transfer system. Over the past year, it changed names (formerly Nearby Share) and then released with a Windows client that made Android-to-Windows sharing a thing. It also works well with Chromebooks.
Notice anything missing from that description? Yes, Google’s Quick Share does not currently work with iOS or macOS. That could change, although we really have no confirmation that it will, but are certainly hopeful.
Through Google’s Nearby repository on Github (here), a Google engineer has introduced some sort of bug fix that specifically calls out iOS and macOS. It looks like it has to do with Quick Share deciding which device name to use when sharing between devices, and the note suggests that device names on those two platforms “generally works well” already:
// If not logged in or account has not given name, use machine name instead.
// For iOS and macOS, the device name is already localized and generally works
// well for Quick Share purposes (i.e. “Niko’s MacBook Pro”), so avoid using
// the non-localized account name and device type concatenation.
While this is a pretty small callout and doesn’t say much, it does sort of suggest that Google is potentially working on a Quick Share client of some sort for iOS and macOS. Why else would they mention those two platforms in such a deliberate way?
All I can say in response to this idea is, “YES, GOOGLE, PLEASE DO THIS.” As a Mac user who uses Android as a smartphone platform 85% of the time, this would be amazing. Sharing files between my Pixel 9 Pro and Mac at the moment is not easy and I essentially have to use Telegram to do so. A dedicated Quick Share app would be so much better.
That said, Quick Share on iOS could be useful as well. So many of us use an iPad as a tablet, since the Android tablet space is still so odd. Sharing between an Android phone and iPad could be very handy, although I’d bet it will be a tough sell to get iPhone owners to install a Google-made Quick Share app.
Google, tell us something.