Opening AirDropped files in 3rd party apps in iOS 17

UI Frameworks UIKit iOS Files and Storage UIKit

Created Sep ’23

Replies 17

Boosts 12

Views 7.2k

Participants 28

Since updating to iOS 17 there doesn't seem to be a way to automatically open files AirDropped into any applications. The files get downloaded to the Files application and you can open them from there, but previously you could open them straight in another application. There doesn't seem to be any documentation to this change.

Is there still a way to open AirDropped files directly in a non-Apple published application?

Answered by DTS Engineer in 767265022

On iOS 17, the behavior of saving an AirDropped file to the Downloads folder (and then launching Files.app) is intended. That is part of the effort to avoid directly passing a file to an app that declares itself as a handler of the file type but isn’t really the file handler that the user expects. If you have feedback on the behavior change on iOS 17, feel free to file your feedback report <http://developer.apple.com/bug-reporting/>.

Boost

mneilan94 OP

May ’24

This is probably the worst update I've seen. If I want to airdrop a video my phone, I want it in my camera roll/photos, not in my files. This is awful. Please change this!!!

sarmar10 OP

Still happening...I agree it makes using airdrop to iPad very user unfriendly. Because of icloud it adds an additional copy to my icloud documents and if I delete it before exporting to notability it deletes from the files and I have to airdrop again. Not sure why they couldn't keep the old version, it was perfectly fine to choose what app to open things in. Please change it back!!