‘Copresence’ could be a cross-platform AirDrop rival

BY GreenBot Staff

Published 3 Nov 2014

There are several services that let you swap files data between Android devices s. But now it appears is building such a feature into Android itself, dubbed ‘Copresence.’

At least that’s the best guess. It’s not clear what Copresence does, exactly, but from what limited information is available the new feature appears to be similar to Apple’s AirDrop service for iOS OS X Yosemite devices.

Unlike Apple’s AirDrop, however, Copresence could work on Android, iOS, possibly Chrome.

y this matters: Sending receiving files between mobile devices is not as simple as it could be, which is why Android apps such as AirDroid are so hy. NFC-enabled Android devices can use Android Beam to share data, but many users don’t even know it’s there Beam is limited to Android devices. th AirDrop exping across Apple’s platform to include Macs, may be looking to maintain feature parity across its mobile platforms.

ay hints

The bulk of the information about Copresence comes courtesy of teardowns of the latest ay Services update. Sites such as Android lice TechAeris took a peek into the A, revealing references to Copresence. This included some art work that shows files data being transferred between devices.

copresencehero Android lice

Android lice says that two devices sharing via Copresence would first authenticate with each other using Bluetooth or maybe even location data. Then files other data would be transferred using -Fi or -Fi Direct.

Beyond Android, there are also references to Copresence in ‘s developer documentation for Chrome. Copresence for Chrome is currently an experimental application programming interface (A) for the developer channel. describes Copresence as a way to “communicate with other nearby devices using ‘s copresence service.”

It’s not clear when Copresence might roll out, or if it even will, but we’ve been expecting something like this from for some time. In September 2013, acquired Bump, the file swapping app for Android iOS. The stalone app exited ay Apple’s App Store in nuary.