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Intermittently, Airdrop will freeze when I try to share a finder to another device. I can't cancel it or close it, Finder has to be Relaunched to fix it, and then Airdrop will work as expected. This usually happens when trying to Airdrop images from my Macbook Pro big sur 11.4 to my iPhone iOS 14.6, but it was happening with previous versions of the OS's as well.
MacBook Pro (2020 and later)
The Airdrop freeze is intermittent which is why Safe Mode doesn't help much unless the Airdrop issue goes away after the first aid checking takes place, so I will give it a try.
The Airdrop freezes started after I first purchased my MacBook Pro in 2020 under OS Catalina, but after a few OS updates it seemed to go away. The behavior returned after the recent Big Sur upgrade.
I only Airdrop to my iPhone from the Macbook Pro.
When the freeze happens, my iPhone shows up in the Airdrop windows, but when I click on my device nothing happens and I'm not able to cancel or close the Airdrop window. I have to Relaunch Finder and start over, and then it will start working again for awhile...
I use the Macbook Pro for photo editing so I only transfer photos with Airdrop. Number of photos or photo size does not seem to be related to the freeze as far as I can tell.
I'll report back after a Safe Mode boot and see how long I go without another freeze.
The Airdrop freeze is intermittent which is why Safe Mode doesn't help much unless the Airdrop issue goes away after the first aid checking takes place, so I will give it a try.
The Airdrop freezes started after I first purchased my MacBook Pro in 2020 under OS Catalina, but after a few OS updates it seemed to go away. The behavior returned after the recent Big Sur upgrade.
I only Airdrop to my iPhone from the Macbook Pro.
When the freeze happens, my iPhone shows up in the Airdrop windows, but when I click on my device nothing happens and I'm not able to cancel or close the Airdrop window. I have to Relaunch Finder and start over, and then it will start working again for awhile...
I use the Macbook Pro for photo editing so I only transfer photos with Airdrop. Number of photos or photo size does not seem to be related to the freeze as far as I can tell.
I'll report back after a Safe Mode boot and see how long I go without another freeze.
Hello jefbak,
Thanks for reaching out to the Apple Support Communities. We understand you are experiencing some issues with AirDrop on your Mac. We are happy to help provide some guidance.
Does this happen every time you try sharing a photo using AirDrop, or only sometimes? One thing we would recommend trying would be to boot the Mac into safe mode. Booting into safe mode clears out some temporary system caches and performs some disk checks to try to fix any issues that might be found. Take a look at how to boot into safe mode here:
How to use safe mode on your Mac
Once you are booted into safe mode, restart the Mac and try sharing the file again to see if the same issue occurs.
We'd also like to ask some additional questions to get a better understanding of the situation.
Keep us updated on how it goes and the answers to those questions. We hope this information helps!
Best Regards.
Airdrop freezes when sharing and Finder must be Relaunched to fix
