For years, AirDrop has been Apple’s tightly guarded convenience feature, locking seamless file sharing inside its own ecosystem. That changes starting today. Samsung is now baking AirDrop interoperability directly into Quick Share, and this is not a concept or beta experiment. It is going live.

Release date

Samsung has officially kicked off the rollout on March 23, 2026, starting in South Korea. This is not a slow, vague deployment either, but the company already has a clear expansion roadmap.

Older Samsung Galaxy devices will likely receive AirDrop compatibility with the Stable One UI 8.5 update. For now, the Galaxy S26 series is being prioritized as it comes preinstalled with the official One UI 8.5 software.

Countries

Next stops include the US (North America) and Europe, followed by Hong Kong, Japan, Latin America, Southeast Asia, and Taiwan. In a typical Samsung strategy, the rollout will move in waves, but the intent is obvious.

This is meant to scale globally and quickly.

Compatibility

The update itself is part of One UI 8.5, delivered via firmware version AZCF. It is a relatively lightweight package, under 1GB, but the impact is anything but small.

This feature is exclusive to the Samsung Galaxy S26 lineup, including the S26, S26 Plus, and S26 Ultra. That exclusivity will frustrate some users, no doubt, but  Samsung has already confirmed expansion to older devices is coming.

Samsung has kept the process simple, which is exactly what it needed to do.

To enable AirDrop compatibility:

• Settings > Connected Devices > Quick Share > Share with Apple Devices

Once toggled on, Galaxy users can send files directly to nearby Apple devices. There is one important condition on the receiving end. iPhone users must have their AirDrop visibility set to “Everyone.” Without that, the sharing will not happen.

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