If you are just watching a series on the train, you will receive an AirDrop request with a cat photo of a stranger. Fortunately, you can easily avoid getting an unwanted AirDrop on your iPhone, iPad or Mac.
Prevent unwanted AirDrop share requests
AirDrop is one of the easiest ways to share photos, files, websites and more between Apple devices. It does not necessarily matter whether the owners know each other. This can be useful, but also annoying in situations where someone accidentally tries to AirDrop the wrong person.
In addition, if you can receive an AirDrop from everyone, they will also see your device in the overview. If you want to restrict this access for any reason, you can do that in iOS and macOS as follows.
Adjust AirDrop preferences in iOS
- Open Settings and tap ‘General’;
- Tap on ‘AirDrop’ here;
- Select “Contacts Only” or “Receive From” if you don’t want to receive any more AirDrop requests at all.
For example, are you on vacation and someone else took a picture of you? You can quickly adjust your AirDrop settings via the Control Center. This way you can still receive the holiday snapshot, without having to add them to your contacts.
To open Control Center, on an iPhone 8 or earlier, swipe from the bottom to the top, and on an iPhone X or later, swipe from the top right corner to the center. Then tap firmly on the menu where the airplane mode and the wifi icon are. Then tap on ‘AirDrop’ and you can adjust from whom you can receive the bluetooth request.
This is how you change AirDrop preferences on the Mac
AirDrop is also a very useful function in macOS, because it allows you to easily share files from your iPhone to the Mac and vice versa, for example. Are you in a public space or open-plan office and do you not want to just receive a partial request from an unknown file? Then follow the steps below.
- Open the Finder on your Mac;
- Tap ‘AirDrop’ in the left menu or use the key combination ‘Cmd + Shift + R’;
- At the bottom, tap ‘Let me be found by:’ and adjust not ‘Only contacts’ or ‘Nobody’.
Do you want more useful tips? Also check, for example, how to unlock your Mac with an Apple Watch or how to prevent ad tracking on your iPhone.