Devices not showing up for AirDrop

airdrop

I have

  • iPhone 5 (with iOS 8.3)
  • MacBook Pro Early 2013 (with OS X Yosemite 10.10.3)
  • iPad Air (with iOS 8.3)

My iPhone is paired with the MacBook, so e.g when my phone rings, I can see it in my computer. But when I want to AirDrop photos from my iPhone the MacBook, then I can't see the MacBook in my iPhone AirDrop targets.

I can see the iPad, I can see my wife's iPhone, but not the MacBook.

On MacBook, I can see the iPad, my wife's phone and even my iPhone and I can drop to there, but not the other way around.

Before I started troubleshooting, the iPhone and MacBook were mutually invisible (I only saw iPad from both). After a while of trying things and sending files back and forth, my MacBook started to see the iPhone, but I did not manage to make it work from the other way. Still, the iPhone seems to be much "less" visible than the iPad – which I see almost instantly and always, the iPhone only seems to appear after a while.

Just to make it clear:

  • both iPhone and MBP have BT turned on
  • both have AirDrop visibility set to Everyone

I would be glad for any suggestions to fix this – what settings to check, logs, whatever.

Best Answer

Steps 3 and 4 are the trick!

Similar issue:

  1. Can send file from MBP to iPad.
  2. Can not see MBP on iPad* airdrop screen.

Fix that worked for me:

  1. On iPad: turn on Wifi, Bluetooth and AirDrop (share with Everyone)
  2. On Mac: turn on Wifi, Bluetooth and AirDrop (share with Everyone), then try to share the file(s) on AirDrop
  3. On Mac: Bluetooth > Browse files on Device; select Jeff's iPad, then 'Browse'; notice it connects, but then it drops right after with the message "The device does not have the necessary services" and
  4. On iPad: observe that 'Mike's MacBook Pro' shows on AirDrop MBP', despite of the error (another error message might be shown under the MBP's name)
  5. On iPad: send pictures/videos to Mac.

  6. [extra] On iPad and MBP: for security reasons, turn off AirDrop (and maybe Bluetooth too) once you're done!

    *Obs: it should work on iPhone too; I upvoted this answer since it helped me to find this solution .

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