Samsung said in a press conference Friday that it will be adding AirDrop to its Galaxy S26 phones, as 9to5Google wrote. Now, the company tells IGN that the update will start rolling out on March 23 in Korea, and will hit US Samsung phones later in the week.
Samsung’s announcement comes weeks after Google apparently cracked the feature and announced it was adding it to Pixel 10 phones. The company then promised last month the capability would spread to other Android phones this year, and so, here we are.
AirDrop will come in as part of an update to Quick Share, the Android version of the feature. Based on an animation Samsung shared with IGN, users who have the feature can activate it by swiping down from the top of their screen and tapping Settings > Connected devices > Quick Share > Share with Apple Devices, then toggling the feature on. A description of the feature says that with this turned on, “your phone may temporarily disconnect from Wi-Fi networks while searching for or sharing with Apple devices.”
With AirDrop on, Galaxy S26 owners will be able to, without any special tricks, quickly share images and images with iPhones, Macs, iPads, and any other AirDrop-capable devices. For it to work, Apple users will need to have AirDrop set to “Everyone.” The company says that although this is only coming to S26 phones at first, it “plans to expand to additional Galaxy devices at a later date.”
Wes is a freelance writer (Freelance Wes, they call him) who has covered technology, gaming, and entertainment steadily since 2020 at Gizmodo, Tom’s Hardware, Hardcore Gamer, and most recently, The Verge. Inside of him there are two wolves: one that thinks it wouldn’t be so bad to start collecting game consoles again, and the other who also thinks this, but more strongly.
