#Google chrome for mac in dock handoff full
#Google chrome for mac in dock handoff android
#Google chrome for mac in dock handoff Bluetooth
#Google chrome for mac in dock handoff mac

#Google chrome for mac in dock handoff Bluetooth

Once you've signed in to the same iCloud account, our old friend Bluetooth 4.0 is responsible for keeping each of your devices informed about what the others are doing. Handoff promises to do this directly, using a combination of the technologies we've talked about so far.įirst, as with the phone call feature, any devices you want to use with Handoff need to be signed in to iCloud with the same Apple ID, which also happens to pair them via Bluetooth (this automated Bluetooth pairing also makes the new 'Instant Hotspot' feature work, but it doesn't really require a whole lot of extra explanation since it's just an automated version of something you can already do).

#Google chrome for mac in dock handoff mac

Maybe you began tapping out an e-mail on your phone and it got a little out of hand, so you want to shoot it to your Mac to wrap it up. Maybe you've got a page on your iPad that you'd like to send to your iPhone before you head out the door. Of the Continuity features Apple is publicizing, Handoff is the one that could change your normal workflow the most drastically. We're sure some people will cling to Mavericks and its pre-Jony Ive user interface just as people stuck by Snow Leopard to avoid the iOS-influenced design and features of later versions. You’ll still be able to do Mac-to-Mac AirDrop on older computers running Yosemite and on Macs running previous versions of OS X. As of this writing, it’s not clear whether adding a third-party Bluetooth 4.0 adapter to an otherwise capable Mac will enable iOS-to-OS X AirDrop for Yosemite.Įarly reports from rumor sites indicate that Yosemite will continue to include the older, entirely Wi-Fi-based version of AirDrop, and it may be possible (but optional) to keep both versions on at the same time.

#Google chrome for mac in dock handoff full

The list covers most Macs sold within the last two or three years, though compared to the full list of Macs that will run Yosemite, it’s still relatively small.

Non-Retina MacBook Pros from 2012 or later.

The following Macs should support the new version of AirDrop and other Bluetooth 4.0-reliant features out of the box: Most Macs picked up Bluetooth LE at some point during 2011 or 2012, depending on the specific product line. Today enough Bluetooth 4.0 Macs are in the wild that switching to the 'new' AirDrop will be feasible for a decent chunk of the OS X user base. The power benefits to using Bluetooth for discovery rather than Wi-Fi is what probably prompted Apple to switch. When implementing the same feature in iOS 7 two years later, most supported devices already used Bluetooth 4.0. When the feature was introduced in mid-2011, only the very newest Macs supported Bluetooth 4.0, so using Bluetooth to allow devices to find each other would have prevented it from working on older systems. OS X’s AirDrop feature in Lion, Mountain Lion, and Mavericks also creates a peer-to-peer Wi-Fi connection to transfer files, but it uses Wi-Fi to discover other nearby devices. The iPhone 4S has Bluetooth 4.0 but doesn’t have a compatible Wi-Fi chipset, so AirDrop isn’t supported.

This combination of hardware features defines whether your iOS device supports AirDrop.

#Google chrome for mac in dock handoff android

Apple appears to be using a feature similar to Wi-Fi Direct to make this work, though it’s not compatible with generic Wi-Fi Direct implementations like the one Android uses. Once the receiver has accepted the sender’s request to send data, a peer-to-peer Wi-Fi network is created, and the data is transferred.

Devices that support AirDrop can advertise to one another that they’re available to communicate, and devices in “scanning” mode then pick these advertisements up and attempt to initiate a connection when prompted. It turns out that AirDrop in iOS 7 uses the same Bluetooth 4.0 “advertising” feature that makes iBeacon work.

The real question is, why didn’t it work this way in the first place? Why did OS X and iOS both have features called AirDrop that, for an entire year, were totally incompatible? At WWDC, Apple was applauded by the seated audience when it announced that Yosemite would support AirDrop compatibility with iOS devices. Apple doesn't list AirDrop on its Continuity page, but the new version of the feature still facilitates communication between iDevices and Macs.