Quick Share, formerly called Nearby Share, is the gold standard for transferring files between Android devices. You are able to share files between Android and Chrome OS devices, but this process has always been pretty slow. However, according to a new report, Quick Share on Chromebooks will be much faster thanks to a new feature coming to Chrome OS.
In case you don’t know, you can also use Quick Share to share files between your Android phone and your Windows computer. The functionality has been available for some time with a brief beta testing. If you’re interested in using Quick Share with your Windows computer, you can download the EXE file and install it. Also, if you’re curious about how to use Quick Share for Windows, we have a guide for you.
Quick Share on Chrome OS is about to get a lot faster
If you found it quicker to transfer files to your Android phones than it is to your Chromebooks, there’s a reason. Android phones use Wi-Fi Direct. This is the technology that allows for very quick transfer speeds between devices. Basically, it turns one of the smartphones into a portable Wi-Fi hotspot to send data. This is many times faster than transferring via Bluetooth.
Well, Chrome OS doesn’t have this ability. So, if you’re transferring large files via Nearby Shared to your Chromebook, it’s being handled through Bluetooth. This is why it’s so much slower.
However, according to recent reports, there are hints within the Chrome OS code that point to Wi-Fi Direct eventually coming to the operating system. Over the past couple of months, the Chrome OS team has been working on bringing this feature. Recently, certain code changes have been spotted within the Chromium Gerrit that point to the feature eventually coming. It was a flag discovered with the description “enable or disable Wi-Fi direct medium for Nearby Share.” A comment in one of the patch files reads “will allow the Nearby Share feature to utilize Wi-Fi P2P for sharing data.”
These both refer to the feature as Nearby Share, as they were most likely in production before Nearby Share transitioned to being called Quick Share. While this is the case, it appears that Wi-Fi Direct isn’t only coming to the software for Quick Share. This is a technology that could be used for other applications.
At this point, we don’t know exactly when this feature is going to launch for Chrome OS. So, we’re going to have to keep our eye on it for any further updates.