AirDrop Hit and Miss

Eric

Mama's lil stinker
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Wondering if I'm the only one with this issue, I regularly use AirDrop to transfer videos from my mac to iPhone and I would say more than half of the time it fails and I have to resend. Not sure if it's network interference or something else but it can be quite frustrating.
 
For myself (this is generally iPhone to iPhone), I’ve never had it fail for small transfers but I’ve had it fail for large transfers, especially if one particular video was huge rather than just all the photos/videos were big in aggregate (eg I just sent a bunch photos and videos but it failed on sending a 17min long video - sending the rest was okay but it took multiple tries to send that one). Sometimes it has trouble seeing the other device to even choose the option to get started, especially after a failure.
 
Would sending yourself a message be an alternative? I do that frequently for photos.
Not really because the files I'm sending are usually in excess of 300 MB. I get it may be slow while transferring but it just hangs, so I have to restart until it goes, then it only takes a few seconds.
 
I've conceded defeat and now upload the video to the cloud and then download it to my phone. Apple is normally a name associated with quality but they've dropped the ball here, it's worthless.
 
I've conceded defeat and now upload the video to the cloud and then download it to my phone. Apple is normally a name associated with quality but they've dropped the ball here, it's worthless.
Does this happen regardless of where you are located? I find I sometimes have trouble at work, but it’s because our corporate guest WiFi network is loaded up with packet inspection/filtering gunk that tends to break things. At home I never have problems, unless my mesh routers start getting flakey, at which point I reboot them and it works again.
 
Does this happen regardless of where you are located? I find I sometimes have trouble at work, but it’s because our corporate guest WiFi network is loaded up with packet inspection/filtering gunk that tends to break things. At home I never have problems, unless my mesh routers start getting flakey, at which point I reboot them and it works again.
It happens on multiple devices with very little wifi activity, at least in the house. I'll try rebooting the mesh routers again and see if it makes a difference. I typically try 9 or 10 times before giving up and uploading to the cloud. Very frustrating.
 
It happens on multiple devices with very little wifi activity, at least in the house. I'll try rebooting the mesh routers again and see if it makes a difference. I typically try 9 or 10 times before giving up and uploading to the cloud. Very frustrating.
this is why i wish apple still made airports. I’ve had so many random problems over the years with various other brands of routers. Even with my pretty decent ones now (synology), I see things like some random wifi light switch losing its connection, then going crazy trying to reconnect which causes some device in a completely different room to start acting weird - like it can connect to the internet but stops connecting to in-house devices. Rebooting the light switch solves it, but then I have to reboot the routers to address the underlying issue so it doesn’t reoccur for awhile.
 
AirDrop mostly works for me, but with some quirks. For example, when I have to transfer a file from my iPhone to my Mac, picking the Mac from the list of destinations sometimes fails, but choosing AirDrop first and then selecting the same computer does the trick.
 
Does this happen regardless of where you are located? I find I sometimes have trouble at work, but it’s because our corporate guest WiFi network is loaded up with packet inspection/filtering gunk that tends to break things. At home I never have problems, unless my mesh routers start getting flakey, at which point I reboot them and it works again.
So I've disconnected the mesh router closest to my office and I have a much better success rate now, only one drop since. This was definitely the issue, appreciate your advice here. 🙏
 
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