News & Reviews:   Nearby Sharing

Way back in March, Google confirmed that it's hard at work on the Nearby Sharing feature. As you may know, this is Google's answer to Apple's AirDrop feature. The company has now confirmed that the feature is now in beta and users who are interested can try it out.

Now that Android 11 beta has launched, Android users finally got access to a feature that's similar to Apple's AirDrop - the Nearby Sharing feature. But Google isn't content with just making it usable on mobile. A source has found that Google plans to make the feature available on even more platforms.

Google employees may be working remotely from home, but they are also developing Android 11 as we speak. In this latest update, the second developer preview of Android 11 has been rolled out by the company and one of the highlighted features is an AirDrop-like function. Previously known as Fast Share, it has been renamed to Nearby Sharing but it could be a placeholder name for now. Anyway, here's what we know.

AirDrop is undeniably one of the strongest features from Apple's ecosystem. When it comes to file sharing, the feature works seamlessly without all the hassles that we encounter on Android smartphones. For that, Google has launched the Android Beam earlier to provide local sharing functionality, but then it has been renamed as Fast Share on Android 10. Now, a source is telling us that the feature is getting its name changed again, this time it will be called Nearby Sharing.