Airdrop not working

I have a recurrent problem with getting my Mac to accept airdrop requests from my iPhone. I press the Mac airdrop button on my phone and it says "Waiting", but no request pops up. Both devices "see" each other -- the Mac turns up in my phone's Airdrop list and vice versa, so it's not something that is solved by all the steps recommended in the various "how to" guides on this site. Other forums recommended turning off the Personal Hotspot; I have done so and no change. The only thing I can think of is that iCloud is mostly turned off for photos - I prefer to manage photos in a more old-school, manual way. Is that what is tripping me up? Any way I can say "no" to iCloud photo sharing and still use Airdrop?