Android’s AirDrop, Nearby Sharing, begins working in Chrome OS
Last month, it was discovered that Google was hard at work on bringing Android’s answer to AirDrop, Nearby Sharing, to Chrome OS and Google Chrome for Windows, Mac, and Linux. Now the feature has begun to appear for some on Chrome OS Canary.
For a few months now, we’ve been watching Nearby Sharing develop, expecting it to be intended for sending files, links, and more between Android devices. With its arrival in Google Chrome, it became clear that Google has much larger ambitions for folks to share between phones, laptops, desktops, and tablets.
As spotted by Chrome Story, Nearby Sharing has begun to work in Chrome OS, but not the way you might expect. For the time being, it’s only appeared in Chrome OS Canary and seems to directly use Android’s version of Nearby Sharing, right down the same UI available on phones today. Chrome Story was able to get Nearby Sharing to work on a Google Pixel Slate and captured a video of it in action.
For the time being, it looks like getting Nearby Sharing is at the very least dependent on two flags in chrome://flags being enabled.
