Google made sharing large files easy for Android phones with Nearby Share. Similar to Apple’s AirDrop, this handy app lets you share bulky files from one Android device to another at the tap of a button. The Big G has also been testing this sharing tool on Windows and today it finally made it officially available for your PC. Nearby Share for Windows brings some new features that weren’t available before. Here are the details.

Nearby Share makes transferring large files an absolute breeze

After testing it for several months, Google has made Nearby Share available on Windows PCs. The app brings convenience, allowing you to transfer files across your phones, tablets, Chromebooks and more devices. Available as an app to download, Nearby Share has been installed by 1.7 million users so far and over 50 million files have already been transferred between PC and Android devices.

Apart from the features that were already available on the Beta, Google has also added some new functions to the app. For one, it can now tell you the estimated time for file transfers to be completed. There is also an image preview feature within device notifications to help you share the right file.

Nearby Share works seamlessly on Windows. You can simply drag and drop files into the app. The process gets much faster if both devices (the sender and receiver) are signed into the same Google account. You don’t even need to manually accept and transfer each file. In case you are not sure, here’s how to use Nearby Share on Android and Windows. Google says that it’s partnering with companies such as HP to include the Nearby Share app on select Windows PCs. This might mean the app will come pre-installed on some PCs.

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Google has just released the beta for the Android Nearby Share app for the Windows PC platform. The app was introduced as a means to offer a simpler method of quickly sharing files between your own devices, and is finally making its way to Windows.

The Search Engine giant had first launched the Nearby Share app back in 2020 for easier and faster file sharing and is now expanding to include the PC platform. According to Google, nearly 3 billion active Android devices can use Nearby Share to swiftly send and receive files between Android phones, tablets, and Chromebooks. And now, the new Nearby Share Beta offers users a way to send and receive files from their Windows PC.

This is made possible thanks to the beta app to make the transfer of files easier. To work seamlessly, the beta app runs in the background so you don’t need to manually run the app every time for transfer files. The data transfer includes files like photos, videos, and documents that can simply be dragged and dropped into the app. Users can also click on the “Send with Nearby Share” in the right click menu. Following this, one will see a list of all nearby Android devices and can select the one they wish to transfer the files to.

As of right now, Google has just announced the Nearby Share beta for Windows in the US and certain other regions across the globe. Also keep in mind that ARM powered devices are not supported at the moment. But for those interested, you can try out the beta on your Windows PC by click on the link here.

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Google has introduced the Material You theming back in the Android 12 operating system. This enables the whole UI to adopt the colour from the wallpaper and change the accent colour, theming, and icons according to that. The brand later further pushed the support of Material You theming to different parts of the UI. Many other brands such as Vivo and OPPO also adopted the wallpaper-based theming engine in the UI. Well, Google has now reportedly did some changes in the Material You theming for the Nearby Share on Android.

Google recently pushed out the latest December patch for the Google Play System Update. Google is reportedly revamping the visuals and motion design for the Nearby Share Android app. Obviously, this means that the Material You theming engine will also get some minor tweaks here and there. The known publication 9To5Google claims that they had spotted the change in Material You for Nearby Share back in the month of November, and this is probably what Google is referring to as “revamping the visuals” in the patch notes of the latest update.

Regarding the improvements, when you start Nearby Shares, a tab slides up to begin “Looking for nearby devices.” Google employed a left-to-right wave in the past to indicate that this was happening. The point was conveyed by a subtle element. Utilizing different Material You forms that expand and then fade out behind your profile avatar, a little Nearby Share redesign will be implemented.

The Nearby Share icon is now visible at the top of this panel, and the text has been made somewhat larger and more central. The share previews have also been improved by Google, which has made them larger and placed them on a card with symbols so that it is easier to see what is being shared.  This minor upgrade to Nearby Share that we enabled has not yet been released, but it is intended to do so after a server-side update with the most recent Google Play services.

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Google introduced Nearby Share for the public in 2020. Initially, it was only limited to Android devices. Within a year, Chrome OS also added support for it. Now, according to a new finding, the search giant is working on a feature for Chrome OS based on Nearby Share.

A finding by ChromeStory (via Android Police) reveals that Google is developing a new feature for Chrome OS called ‘Nearby Sharing Self Share’.  This feature will rely on Nearby Share.

When this feature goes live, users will see an option dubbed as ‘Send to your devices’ in the Nearby Share screen. As the name suggests, by selecting this option, users will be able to share files to all their devices.

This is a nifty feature, especially for those who use multiple devices at a time. Unfortunately, it’s not known when it will be introduced in the ‘Canary’ channel, let alone stable.

Though Nearby Share (stable) is only one and a half years old, it is already proving to be one of the best and most useful features from Google to date. The company has even announced plans to bring it to Windows in the near future.

The AirDrop competitor works across more devices, however, it is not as stable as Apple’s offering. Hopefully, it gets better in the long run.

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Last month, Google announced Nearby Share for Android, a feature similar to AirDrop on iOS, that allows users to share photos, links, files, and more with users near them.

The feature which began rolling out to Pixel and Samsung phones is now more widely available to other Android phones as long as they are running Android 6.0 Marshmallow and above.

For this week’s poll, we want to know if you have already gotten it and if you have used it since you did. So please take the poll and also let us know in the comment box below what you think about the feature and if you believe it will see much use or replace other methods you use to share things before.

[yop_poll id=”54″]

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After months of waiting and years of development according to Google, Nearby Share for Android is finally official. The feature which allows users to share files to nearby devices in a similar fashion as Apple’s AirDrop was announced today for Android devices running Android 6.0 Marshmallow and up.

While Android has never had a shortage of super-fast file sharing apps, Nearby Share is a built-in feature that requires no app and the good thing is that it is not manufacturer-specific. This means you can transfer to any Android device as long as it is running Android 6.0 and up.

Nearby Share allows you to share files, photos, and links between devices easily. It will even automatically select the best way to send

Google takes privacy seriously with Nearby Share. When you share files with a device, the information of both the sender and receiver is fully-encrypted. You can also choose which devices can see you. You can allow all devices within range to see you or selected devices under your contacts. You can also choose to stay hidden.

It was also revealed that the feature will be coming to more operating systems starting with Chromebooks in a few months. Thus, allowing Android and Chromebooks to share files between devices.

Starting today, Nearby Share will be available first on select Google Pixel and Samsung devices. Other devices will get the feature in the coming weeks.

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It is no longer news that Google is working on a file-sharing feature for Android similar to Apple’s AirDrop. The feature which is now called Nearby Share (formerly known as Nearby Sharing) has been in development for a while, and now more details have surfaced.

New info has revealed that Nearby Share will not be limited to sharing between Android devices but also other operating systems with the help of the Chrome browser.

A few months ago, April to be precise, a Chrome commit was discovered with a flag with a description that reads “enables Nearby Sharing functionality”. It was presumed the flag was to activate the feature on other operating systems with a Chrome browser since Android already has the feature baked in.

Another commit lends further credence to the feature being available in the Chrome browser for Windows, macOS, and Linux.

A twitter user by the name Dinsan (@_dinsan) shared an image showing Nearby Share in Chrome OS settings.

Nearby Sharing shows up in #chromebook settings pic.twitter.com/Z2V5UrgPT4

— Dinsan (@_dinsan) June 19, 2020

Not limiting the feature to Android is a smart move by Google and will make it easy for users to share files between devices especially those who use multiple devices running different operating systems e.g. an Android phone, a Chrome tablet, and a Windows PC.

Google is yet to announce when the feature will be official.

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