Airdrop turns 'receiving off' automatically on both iPhone and iPad.

For the last year I have found airdrop to be very unreliable. Half the time somebody wants to transfer files to me it is off, and then I can't turn it back on. This is a pretty serious bug, and it makes airdrop basically a non-existent feature.

Behavior:

• Go to Settings > General > AirDrop
• It is set to Receiving off (even though it has always been set to Everyone).
• I change it to Everyone.
• I click back to General.
• I click back to AirDrop.
• It is again set to Receiving Off.

So it is not saving my new Everyone state. Or it is overriding that and always turning it back off.

There is zero feedback from the OS about Everyone being disabled or not available, and zero feedback about it forcing it back to off. Zero info in hint text about what might disable this feature.

This is a bug and a design problem Apple needs to fix ASAP.

So it is possible that hardware resets etc might fix this, but it is happening on both my iPhone 13 and iPad Pro, and resets are not the real solution. This should never be happening in the first place.

Does anyone know what might be causing the auto-off behavior?

• I have already enabled and re-enabled bluetooth and wifi, and typically I don't turn those off.
• I typically leave AirDrop on everyone.
• I have no focus mode set and Do Not Disturb is not on.
• My Macbook can't see the iPad as an available device to send to.

I hope Apple Support is monitoring this request as there are variants on this topic posted everywhere without any real solutions given.