After years of users clamoring for functionality, Google finally launched its own version of Apple’s AirDrop last year. Now, we’ve identified what’s next for Nearby Share – the ability to see everyone around you and send files to more than one person at the same time.
Nearby Share is already useful in its current form, but there is a lot of room for improvement. As it stands today, the resource can only share files, links and other information with one person and one device at a time, and that person must also be a known contact.
In a future update, Nearby Share will extend visibility to any device near you, with the setting being called “All”. The setting is, of course, optional, but it will allow anyone close to you to share media with your device, as long as your screen is unlocked. Apple’s AirDrop has a similar feature that, at times hilarious, can be used in schools and elsewhere. To avoid this type of abuse, however, Nearby Share will offer a “temporary mode” that goes back to the previous one, contacts only start after 5 minutes. With this change, the “All contacts” mode changes to an alternate mode instead of a dedicated mode.
We also found that the toggle button for the Quick Share settings next will soon launch a redesigned pop-up menu using the same UI as the bottom sheet. This new menu allows for a quick switch between the “All” options and contacts. Currently, tapping that icon immediately starts a Share window nearby, but when this new visibility setting is added, the UI will be replaced by the ability to toggle visibility options. The quick settings icon will also indicate whether the feature is enabled or not – definitely a welcome addition.
In addition, we’ve also found that Nearby Share will soon support a form of group sharing. This allows users to share their information not only with a device or contact, but with multiple destinations at the same time. Unfortunately, this feature is not yet fully working. You can see below how it will look when in use, but when we try the feature, it fails.
Notably, it appears that this feature does not share media with all devices at the same time, but one at a time in succession. That may change before the final release, however. Still, it is a substantial improvement over the current state.
The timeline for these features to make their formal debut is currently unknown, unfortunately, as is often the case with previous discoveries like this. Google did not formally launch Nearby Share for more than a year after we first discovered it, for example. Still, it’s good to see that Google is actively working to expand the scope of this very useful feature.
Dylan Roussel contributed to this article.
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