Comment by gregoriol
1 day ago
AWDL is such an amazing technology, it's understandable that Apple wants to keep it only for their devices as it gives them a noticeable advantage for quick stuff sharing.
1 day ago
AWDL is such an amazing technology, it's understandable that Apple wants to keep it only for their devices as it gives them a noticeable advantage for quick stuff sharing.
They didn't. Apple contributed the core logic to the Wi-Fi Alliance to build Wi-Fi Aware, which they now also support.
Interestingly, it still took the EU to force them to actually adopt it (and open it up for apps to use) in iOS 26.
PSA:
* https://www.wi-fi.org/wi-fi-aware-resources
* https://developer.apple.com/documentation/WiFiAware
* https://developer.android.com/develop/connectivity/wifi/wifi...
Apple docs say iOS 26/macOS 26, that's so brand new that no apps are using it right now, will have to check that again in a few years.
Kind of. When I looked, they added the api for devs to use on iOS, but it isn’t on macOS yet, and nothing uses it as far as I could see.
It’s a future promising tech though. A much better version of Wi-Fi Direct.
So, should there be apps that use it to transfer files between iOS, Android, Windows, and Mac without requiring them to be on the same network?
Google's QuickShare contains a reverse-engineered AWDL implementation that works on Pixel and a few other phones.
As for WiFi NAN: support for it seems rather limited outside of iOS and Android. From what I can tell the feature is barely tested on Linux and I can't find any generic Windows APIs for it either.
No WiFi cards for pcs support it.
4 replies →
The EU required they use an open standard https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/11/the-eu-made-apple-ad...
AWDL really isn't that novel, neither as an idea nor implementation. What Apple did nail is the user experience on top of it.
Except 20% of the time it just doesn’t work. Hardly an advantage if most people default to texting because of airdrop’s failure rate
We have been using AWDL intensely (not via AirDrop but Network.framework) for 6+ years and it fails less than 5% of the time. It's pretty impressive for a non-connected link between devices. The most common problems we face are very high device density places (100+ device in 30sqm space) and device wandering out of reach quickly (sometime as low as 5m).
Agreed. It's been like that for years.