IPhone – Airdrop doesn’t work between MBP mid-2012 and iPhone 6

airdropiphonemacbook pro

I read that Airdrop between iOS is since the MBP mid-2012. Although I have that Macbook I can't see my iPhone and viceversa. What can be the problem or the info that I'm misunderstanding?

PS: I have El Capitan but didn't make a clean installation.

Thanks in advance.

Best Answer

Found a post which gives this advice:

Turn off bluetooth on your mac, delete: /Library/Preferences/com.apple.Bluetooth.plist turn bluetooth back on

I tried this and can confirm that it fixed the problem for me.

Related Solutions

IOS – Why is Airdrop not available between iPhone and old MBP

Your MacBook Pro does not contain the necessary hardware to support AirDrop.

In OS X, the feature didn't use Bluetooth, instead using Bonjour and personal area networking over WiFi to discover and transfer files between Macs.

When iOS gained the feature in version 7, it was a completely different implementation, using Bluetooth LE and WiFi Direct. That's why it was not previously compatible with the OS X implementation.

Apple has now retrofitted the iOS implementation onto OS X in Yosemite. This in turn requires a chip for Bluetooth v4 and LE support. This chip was not included in MacBook Pros until mid-2012.

You may be able to replace the Bluetooth chip in a 2011 MacBook Pro. See this thread on MacRumors. It references Handoff/Continuity but the underlying chip replacement is what is needed to enable AirDrop as well.

As it turns out the 2011 MacBook Pro can use the same Airport/Bluetooth card as the mid 2012 Macbook pro and its user replaceable so by replacing the 2011 macbook pro Airport/Bluetooth card you should have the ability to use Handoff/continuity.

MacOS – Airdrop between two MBPs only works in one direction – why

I found the answer. Something in the side bar preferences was messing with the system. I deleted this file from the 2013 MBP (which could not see the other machine or network drives):

~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.sidebarlists.plist

and rebooted.

Then everything came back online and started working.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

IOS – Why is Airdrop not available between iPhone and old MBP

MacOS – Airdrop between two MBPs only works in one direction – why

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