How to Add AirDrop to Dock on Mac for Rapid Access
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If you frequently use AirDrop on the Mac to send and receive files between Macs or to and from iOS devices, you may appreciate having ultra-fast access to AirDrop by having it readily available from the Dock of Mac OS.
By using a little file system trick, you can gain direct access to AirDrop through the Mac Dock, rather than having to use the Finder to navigate to the file sharing feature. This guide will walk through how to set that up on Mac.
Obviously the Mac must support AirDrop to be able to use the feature, let alone have access to it. Nearly every vaguely modern Mac supports AirDrop, and all modern MacOS operating systems support the feature, so as long as you’re reasonably up to date then compatibility shouldn’t be an issue. Adding an AirDrop icon into the Dock of the Mac is achieved by locating a shortcut to the AirDrop feature and then placing it into the Dock. This is hidden by default within a system folder, but it’s easy to retrieve with the following steps:
How to Add AirDrop to the Dock on Mac
- Open the Finder of Mac OS
- Pull down the “Go” menu and select “Go To Folder”
- Enter the following directory path exactly, then hit Enter / Return to jump to that location in the file system:
/System/Library/CoreServices/Finder.app/Contents/Applications/
- Find the “AirDrop.app” application within the directory, then drag and drop Airdrop.app into the Dock of the Mac, arranging it for where you want the icon to be accessible
- Close the /CoreServices/Finder.app/Contents/ folder when finished
Now if you click on the AirDrop icon in the Mac Dock, an AirDrop window will open immediately in Finder to activate the feature, making AirDrop on the Mac ready to send and receive.
Remember, AirDrop can work to send data to and from Macs, as well as to and from iOS devices. If you’re unfamiliar with data transfer using AirDrop, the following walkthrough guides should be helpful to you:
- Mac to Mac: How to use AirDrop on a Mac to send files to other Macs
- Mac to iOS: How to use AirDrop to send from a Mac to iPhone or iPad
- iOS to Mac: How to use Airdrop to send files and data from iPhone or iPad to a Mac
It’s also helpful to recall that where AirDrop files go depends on the target recipients operating system, on the Mac that’s always the Downloads folder of the active user account, but in iOS it can be various places depending on the file type being sent.
Ultimately the AirDrop window accessed from the Dock this way will be the same AirDrop window you’d access in Finder when clicking on ‘AirDrop’ in the sidebar menu, or from the Go menu, or via the AirDrop keyboard shortcut, it’s just a matter of ease and speed that make adding the AirDrop icon to the Dock a helpful trick.
You may notice this is similar to how you go about adding iCloud Drive to the Mac Dock, and so while you’re performing either trick you could add another step to include that as well if it interests you.
