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Question:

Does anyone know of a settings hack to prevent me from being able to see people not in my contacts as AirDrop recipients (regardless of their own privacy settings)?

More details:

This is the opposite of the traditional problem* with AirDrop ; in this case, my neighbor(s) annoyingly leave their AirDrop discoverability settings as "Everyone," meaning their devices pop up every time I try to AirDrop something from one of my devices to the other. Combined with the fact that recipient bubbles pop in and out at random in the UI, I'm worried that I may mistakenly AirDrop them a sensitive document.

* "why isn't such and such device showing up"

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Currently there’s no way to limit the possible recipients for you to send a file to.

Though not explicitly stated by Apple, it’s conceivable that blocking recipients was not implemented because this would defeat the purpose of AirDrop: to quickly and easily share files (like a contact) between iPhone/iPad.

AirDrop security, from a recipient’s perspective, was implemented to protect against AirDrop SPAM

Combined with the fact that recipient bubbles pop in and out at random in the UI, I'm worried that I may mistakenly AirDrop them a sensitive document.

While this would be a great feature, it’s currently unavailable and there’s no AirDrop workaround. However, if you do have a sensitive document to send, there are a couple prudent measure you can take:

  • Password protect the document and use a different method to communicate (i.e. Messages/SMS) the passkey. The AirDropped document will be useless without the password.

  • Share it on iCloud, OneDrive (my preferred), DropBox, or similar and share a link via email. The document or the link can be password protected similar as above

  • Email the document.

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  • How would restricting one's settings to only show devices from contacts as recipients defeat being able to quickly and easily share files between iPhone/iPad? Closer to the opposite is true, because I can't quickly and easily share if I have to dodge unwanted recipients in UI. If I wanted to intentionally share something with a device owned by someone not in my contacts, Apple could create a toggle for me to temporarily allow that. It might be slightly confusing, but not much worse than the status quo which involves some messing with settings usually, anyway (by the recipient to "allow all").
    – ijoseph
    Commented Mar 3, 2023 at 4:29
  • "While this would be a great feature, it’s currently unavailable and there’s no AirDrop workaround" is the actual answer -- if you highlight that at the top (in bold or something), I'd be willing to mark as accepted.
    – ijoseph
    Commented Mar 3, 2023 at 4:31

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