I’ve had little time to worry about the space between Android and iPhone sharing since I switched to the Realme ecosystem. The experience isn’t exactly native and it’s more like using Xender since there's a third-party app involved. But it’s been smooth enough that I can move files around easily.
It seems that Google wants to broaden and improve that experience. Android Authority recently dug into the latest Google Play Services beta and found proof that Quick Share for iPhones is currently in the works.
Quick Share strings reveal iPhone support
Last year, Android Authority spotted solid hints of Quick Share coming to iOS and macOS. Among those hints was a code comment from a Google engineer inside the Nearby library. It specifically mentioned how a bug fix improved device name handling on iOS and macOS. It pointed out that names like “Niko’s MacBook Pro” already “work well for Quick Share purposes”.
This time around, an APK teardown of the latest Google Play Services beta has uncovered actual strings and menus that explicitly mention iPhones. Developers usually use these <string> tags to store text that will eventually show up on screen, instead of hard-coding the words into the app itself. It makes the text easier to update, localize, or reuse.
In this case, the first line discovered defined the body of a message, which says “To share end-to-end encrypted files with iPhone and other devices, first sign in”. The second line defined the title of the dialog, which says “Sign in to share”.
Together, these strings form a pop-up dialog box on an Android phone when you try to share something with an iPhone through Quick Share.
Related: 5 iPhone features Android needs to steal ASAP!
iPhone Quick Share support may require Google sign-in
Normally on Android, Quick Share doesn’t require you to log into a Google account. It simply works over peer-to-peer connections, such as Bluetooth, Wi-Fi Direct, and Near-Field Communication. All you need to do is tap and send files between Android devices.
But when the teardown team forced the hidden iPhone-sharing menu to appear, they only saw it after signing out of their Google account. There are a couple of possible explanations, with the first one being device visibility.
Quick Share lets you set whether your phone is visible to everyone, to contacts only, or to no one. If, or when, iPhones become supported, Google may require account sign-in so that your Google identity can manage who sees your device and who can send you files. That would make sense if iOS support relies on cloud-based account matching rather than purely local discovery.
Also, iPhones don’t have Google Play Services rooted into their platform. Google might need to build a standalone Quick Share app that authenticates through your Google account to establish trust and encryption. It would probably be like Realme’s O+ Connect solution, but with an extra hurdle. That would explain the message about end-to-end encrypted files.
Regardless, it's nice to see that Google hasn't abandoned the idea. It's about time those closed walls start coming down, or at the very least, that we carve a window through them.
