AirDrop Not Working? Every Cause and Fix, in the Order Worth Checking

AirDrop fails without saying anything. The other device simply is not in the list, or the transfer sits on "Waiting" and never moves. There is no error to look up, which is why "AirDrop stopped working" is such a common search and such a frustrating one. The reason is that AirDrop quietly depends on nine separate things being true at the same moment, and any one of them takes it out. This page walks through all nine in the order that finds the fault fastest.

Six quick checks fix AirDrop not working most of the time

Before you read anything else, run these six in order on both devices. Each takes a few seconds and between them they account for the large majority of AirDrop failures:

1. Wake and unlock both devices, and keep both screens on.
2. Bring them within about 9 metres of each other, ideally in the same room.
3. Open Settings on both and confirm Bluetooth and Wi-Fi are switched on.
4. Switch Personal Hotspot off on the iPhone.
5. On the receiving device, set AirDrop Receiving to Everyone for 10 Minutes.
6. Send again, and watch the receiving screen for the prompt rather than the sending one.

If that got you moving, you are done. If it did not, the rest of this page takes each condition in turn and explains what it does and how it fails.

Camera to Clipboard sends a photo with fewer parts to go wrong

Fixing AirDrop is worth doing, and the rest of this page will get it back. But if the reason you were AirDropping a photo is that you want it in a document, an email or a chat on a computer, there is a shorter path with far fewer conditions attached to it.

• Camera to Clipboard sends a phone photo to a computer over your local Wi-Fi with no Bluetooth involved at all. Removing one of the two radios removes a whole category of the discovery failures on this page.
• A photo sent with Camera to Clipboard lands on the computer's clipboard rather than in a folder. Press Ctrl + V on a PC or Cmd + V on a Mac and it is in the document, with no file to go and find afterwards.
• Camera to Clipboard works between an iPhone and a Windows PC, which AirDrop has never done. Apple has never released AirDrop for Windows, and the AirDrop for Windows guide covers what your options actually are there.
• Camera to Clipboard sends the photo straight from the phone to the computer, with nothing uploaded to a cloud service. That means it works on a network with no internet, and there is no account storage to fill up.
• Camera to Clipboard does need the phone and the computer on the same Wi-Fi network, which is the one condition it depends on. AirDrop makes its own link and does not, so on a train with no Wi-Fi at all AirDrop is still the better tool.

1. Install Camera to Clipboard on the phone and the desktop app on the computer.
2. Pair once by scanning a QR code, about ten seconds.
3. Take or pick a photo on the phone and send it.
4. Press Ctrl + V or Cmd + V on the computer.

Free to download and try on both ends.

Personal Hotspot silently switches AirDrop off on an iPhone

This is the single most common cause and almost nobody guesses it, because the two features look unrelated and the phone never mentions the conflict:

• Personal Hotspot switched on stops AirDrop working, and nothing on the iPhone tells you that is the reason. The Wi-Fi radio can only do one job at a time, and sharing a connection with other devices takes it away from the direct link AirDrop needs.
• Turning Personal Hotspot off is the first thing to try when AirDrop stopped working for no obvious reason. Open Settings > Personal Hotspot and switch Allow Others to Join off, then send again.
• An iPhone can be sharing its hotspot without you switching it on today, because the setting stays on until someone turns it off. A laptop that connected to it last week will have quietly kept it awake, so check it even when you are sure you did not use it.
• Personal Hotspot on the receiving iPhone breaks AirDrop exactly as much as on the sending one. Check both phones. People almost always check only the one they are holding.
• An iPhone that is joined to somebody else's hotspot can still use AirDrop normally. Only the device sharing the connection loses AirDrop, so being a guest on a hotspot is not the problem.

AirDrop needs Bluetooth and Wi-Fi on even with no network joined

AirDrop uses both radios, for two different jobs, and understanding which does what explains several failures that otherwise look arbitrary:

• AirDrop uses Bluetooth to find the other device and Wi-Fi to carry the file, so switching either one off breaks it. Both radios have to be on at both ends, and a device with Bluetooth off will never appear in anyone's AirDrop list.
• AirDrop does not need a Wi-Fi network and does not need the internet, only the Wi-Fi radio switched on. Once Bluetooth has found the other device, the two build a direct Wi-Fi link between themselves, which is why AirDrop works on a plane or in a field with no signal.
• The two devices do not have to be on the same Wi-Fi network for AirDrop to work. This trips people up in the other direction, when they waste time joining a phone to a network that was never needed.
• Turning Wi-Fi or Bluetooth off from Control Center deliberately leaves AirDrop working, while turning them off in Settings stops it. The Control Center buttons only disconnect you from the current network or accessory, and Apple keeps the radios alive on purpose so AirDrop, AirPlay and Apple Pencil carry on.
• Airplane Mode switches off both of the radios AirDrop depends on, so AirDrop cannot work until Airplane Mode is off. Switching Wi-Fi and Bluetooth back on individually while Airplane Mode stays on does work, and is worth knowing on a flight.

Contacts Only is why AirDrop stopped showing the person you want

An empty list of people is the most common way AirDrop fails, and the receiving setting is behind nearly all of it. There are three settings and they behave very differently:

• AirDrop set to Contacts Only shows you nobody unless that person is already saved in your Contacts. The device is not broken and it is not out of range. It is deliberately hiding from anyone it does not recognise.
• Contacts Only matches on the Apple Account email address or phone number, not on the name on the contact card. A colleague saved under their work email will not match if they sign in to iCloud with a personal one, which is why AirDrop fails between two people who obviously have each other's numbers.
• AirDrop's Contacts Only setting needs both people signed into iCloud on the devices they are holding. A device signed out of iCloud has no identity to check against, so it stays invisible.
• Setting AirDrop Receiving to Everyone for 10 Minutes is the fastest way to prove Contacts Only is the problem. If the person appears the moment they switch it, you have your answer and can fix the contact card afterwards.
• The Everyone setting turns itself back to Contacts Only after ten minutes, so an AirDrop fix that worked yesterday will not work today. Apple made it time-limited on purpose to stop unwanted files from strangers, and it is the reason AirDrop feels intermittent.
• AirDrop Receiving set to Receiving Off makes a device invisible to everyone, including people in its Contacts. It is easy to leave that way after switching it off once. The setting is at Settings > General > AirDrop on an iPhone or iPad.

Focus and a dark screen hide the AirDrop prompt from the receiver

Sometimes AirDrop is working perfectly and the transfer is simply waiting for somebody to say yes. From the sender's side that looks identical to a failure:

• An AirDrop prompt only appears on a device that is awake and unlocked, so a phone lying face down in a bag never shows it. The sender sees nothing but "Waiting", with no hint that the other end is asleep.
• A Focus mode or Do Not Disturb silences the banner and sound that announce an incoming AirDrop. The prompt can be sitting there unnoticed on a screen the owner has not looked at, so switch the Focus off before you decide AirDrop is broken.
• AirDrop between two devices signed into the same Apple Account accepts automatically with no prompt at all. A photo you sent from your iPhone to your own iPad has already arrived and is in Photos, so stop waiting for a prompt that was never going to come.
• Watching the receiving screen while the other person taps AirDrop settles in seconds whether the prompt appears. Almost everybody watches the sending device instead, which is the screen that cannot tell you anything useful.
• Tapping Decline on an AirDrop prompt ends the transfer with no message on the sending device. If someone dismissed it by accident, the sender is left thinking AirDrop failed.

A Mac firewall set to block all incoming connections stops AirDrop

If the device nothing can reach is a Mac, and phone to phone AirDrop works fine, the Mac has two settings of its own that no iPhone guide will mention:

• A Mac firewall set to block all incoming connections stops AirDrop reaching that Mac, so it never appears in anyone else's list. The option is a blanket block, so it takes out the file transfer along with everything else that arrives from outside.
• The block all incoming connections switch that breaks AirDrop lives in the Mac's firewall options, under Network in recent macOS versions and under Security in older ones. Open the firewall settings, open its options, and clear that one checkbox rather than turning the whole firewall off.
• A Mac that nothing can AirDrop to while iPhone to iPhone works points straight at the Mac's own settings. That one comparison saves you from checking the phones again, and you can run it in under a minute.
• The Mac's AirDrop window has its own discovery setting that has to be something other than No One. Open Finder > Go > AirDrop and check the "Allow me to be discovered by" line at the bottom of that window.
• A Mac has to be awake to receive an AirDrop, and a closed lid puts it to sleep. Open it, let it wake fully, and leave the AirDrop window on screen while the phone sends.

Screen Time can remove AirDrop from an iPhone completely

There is one failure that looks different from all the others, and it is worth learning to recognise because it saves you from checking every other cause on this page:

• Screen Time's content and privacy restrictions can switch AirDrop off entirely, which removes it from the Share sheet and Control Center. The feature is not hidden or misconfigured. It has been taken away.
• AirDrop missing from an iPhone altogether, rather than showing an empty list, is the sign that a restriction turned it off. Every other cause on this page leaves AirDrop visible and simply unable to find anyone, so this one is easy to tell apart.
• Screen Time restrictions that hide AirDrop on a phone set up for a child are often years old and long forgotten. Look under Screen Time for the content and privacy restrictions, then in the list of allowed apps and features.
• A work or school iPhone can have AirDrop switched off by whoever manages the device, and no setting on the phone will bring it back. Organisations disable it to stop files leaving, so the only way through is to ask them.

Restarting Bluetooth clears an AirDrop transfer stuck on Waiting

A transfer that starts and then stalls is a different problem from one that never finds the other device. Work down these five, in this order:

• An AirDrop transfer sitting on Waiting usually means nobody has accepted it yet, rather than that anything is broken. Waiting is the state between the two devices agreeing to talk and the receiver tapping Accept, so look at the other screen before you change any settings.
• A large video takes several minutes to AirDrop even when everything is working properly. A progress bar that is moving slowly is not a fault, and cancelling it to start again only costs you the time you already spent.
• Cancelling an AirDrop stuck on Waiting and sending it again clears the stall more often than waiting longer does. Tap the sender's own name or the progress ring to cancel, then start the send from scratch.
• Turning Bluetooth off and back on in Settings on both devices fixes AirDrop failures that survive everything else. Do it from Settings rather than Control Center, because the Control Center button does not fully restart the radio.
• Restarting both devices is the last step worth trying before deciding AirDrop will not work today. It clears the discovery state on both ends at once, which is something no individual toggle does.

AirDrop needs nine things at once, which is why it fails so often

Each cause on this page is a separate fix, and it is worth stepping back to see why there are so many of them. This is the real reason AirDrop feels unreliable when the individual pieces are all quite simple:

• AirDrop only works when nine separate conditions are all true at the same moment. Every one of them is its own way for the transfer to fail, and they are:
  • Both devices switched on, awake and unlocked.
  • The two devices within about 9 metres of each other.
  • Bluetooth on, at both ends.
  • Wi-Fi on, at both ends, network or no network.
  • Personal Hotspot off on the iPhone.
  • AirDrop Receiving set to something other than Receiving Off.
  • Both people in each other's Contacts, if Receiving is set to Contacts Only.
  • On a Mac, the firewall not set to block all incoming connections.
  • No Screen Time or workplace restriction switching AirDrop off.
• AirDrop reports every one of its nine possible failures the same way, as an empty list of people. It never says which condition is missing, so nine different problems look like one identical symptom and you have to test your way through them.
• The settings AirDrop depends on are spread across five different screens, which is why checking them all takes so long. On an iPhone they are:
  • Control Center, for Bluetooth and Wi-Fi at a glance.
  • The Settings > Bluetooth and Settings > Wi-Fi screens, for the radios themselves.
  • The Settings > General > AirDrop screen, for the Receiving setting.
  • The Settings > Personal Hotspot screen, for the hotspot conflict.
  • The Settings > Screen Time screen, for the restriction that removes AirDrop.
• Two of AirDrop's conditions expire on their own, which is what makes it work one day and not the next. The Everyone setting reverts after ten minutes and the devices drift out of range as people move, so nothing you changed has to be wrong for AirDrop to stop.
• Every one of AirDrop's conditions has to hold on both devices, not just on yours. That doubles the list to check and it is the reason troubleshooting AirDrop with somebody else takes so much longer than doing it alone.

Personal Hotspot and Contacts Only cause most AirDrop failures

Not every cause is worth the same amount of your time. This ranks them by how often they turn out to be the answer against how long each one takes to rule out.

Fix AirDrop for Apple devices and use an app for a Windows PC

Which fix you reach for depends on what the symptom looks like. Match yours to one of these five and start there.

• Turning Personal Hotspot off is the first fix to try when AirDrop stops between two Apple devices for no clear reason. It is the most common cause and it takes about five seconds to rule out, so it belongs before everything else.
• Setting AirDrop Receiving to Everyone for 10 Minutes is the fix when nobody at all appears in the AirDrop sheet. Have the receiving device do it, not the sending one, because it is the receiver that decides who can see it.
• Checking the firewall and the Finder AirDrop window is the fix when a Mac is the device nothing can reach. Phones that can AirDrop to each other but not to the Mac have already told you where the problem is.
• Camera to Clipboard is the better choice than AirDrop when the photo is going into a document or an email. It arrives on the clipboard rather than as a file in Downloads, which removes the step you were going to do next anyway.
• Camera to Clipboard is what to use when the computer you are sending to runs Windows, because AirDrop never will. No amount of troubleshooting makes a Windows PC appear in an AirDrop list, since Apple has never built it for that.

Common questions about AirDrop not working

Why is my AirDrop not working all of a sudden?
Personal Hotspot is the most common answer, because switching it on stops AirDrop and nothing on screen says so. After that, check that Bluetooth and Wi-Fi are both on in Settings, that both devices are awake, unlocked and within about 9 metres, and that AirDrop Receiving is set to Everyone for 10 Minutes rather than Contacts Only. The Everyone setting also expires by itself after ten minutes, which is why AirDrop often works one day and not the next.

Why can I not see the other person in AirDrop?
An empty AirDrop list usually means the receiving device is set to Contacts Only and you are not in its Contacts under the right details. Contacts Only needs both people signed into iCloud, and it matches on the Apple Account email address or phone number rather than the name on the card. Have the other person set AirDrop Receiving to Everyone for 10 Minutes and try again. If they appear straight away, that was the cause.

Does AirDrop need Wi-Fi or an internet connection?
AirDrop needs the Wi-Fi radio switched on, but it does not need a Wi-Fi network and it does not need the internet. It uses Bluetooth to find the other device and then builds its own direct Wi-Fi link between the two to carry the file. Turning Wi-Fi off in Settings stops AirDrop, while turning it off from Control Center deliberately leaves AirDrop working.

Why does AirDrop not work with a Windows PC?
AirDrop is Apple's own feature and Apple has never released it for Windows, so a PC will never appear in the AirDrop list no matter what you change on the phone. To get a phone photo onto a Windows PC you need an app that runs on both ends, such as Camera to Clipboard, which sends the photo to the PC's clipboard over your local Wi-Fi.