- Nearby Share, Android’s equivalent to AirDrop, continues to receive updates from Google.
- The latest change lets you share files and text to your devices even when their screens are off.
- Google hasn’t announced this change, but we recently noticed it on our devices.
A lot of people are still not aware that Android has an equivalent to AirDrop called Nearby Share, and that’s a shame because it only keeps getting better and better. Earlier this year, the sharing service added support for Windows, enabling you to share files between your Android device and your PC. Now, the service appears to have quietly rolled out a nifty quality-of-life improvement that’ll make sharing even more convenient between your devices: the ability to send things to your devices even when their screens are off.
When you previously opened Nearby Share on a sender device, only devices whose screens were on and unlocked could appear in the list of devices you could send to. This was done to save battery life, as devices have to periodically broadcast their availability over Bluetooth in order to appear as a receiver target in Nearby Share. That’s not a big deal when the screen is on and the phone is unlocked, as the battery drain from periodic Bluetooth scans is negligible compared to other battery guzzlers like the screen itself or the modem. However, when the screen is off, it’s generally best to throttle scans or services to maximize battery life, and that’s what Google did with Nearby Share for the longest time.