Google is bringing Quick Share to the Android 15 setup wizard — Here's why that matters

If you want to share files between Chromebooks, Windows PCs, and Android devices, there are a lot of file sharing services you can choose from that do the job, but Quick Share has the lowest barrier to entry. That’s because it’s baked into most Chromebooks as well as most Android devices, so you don’t have to download additional software to send or receive files. However, many people aren’t even aware their device has Quick Share, which adds a bit of friction to file transfers. Thankfully, Google and its OEM partners are adding a Quick Share page to Android’s setup wizard that will hopefully boost awareness and adoption of the file sharing tool.

Google rolled out Quick Share (formerly Nearby Share) in 2020 to all Android devices running Android 6.0 or higher with the Google Play Services app installed. As Google Play Services is bundled with the Google Play Store, it’s available on the vast majority of phones and tablets that run Android. That means that Quick Share is available on hundreds of millions of Android phones and tablets around the world, giving it a similar level of availability as Apple’s AirDrop feature. Unfortunately, there are many Android users who have no idea Quick Share even exists, leading to many people asking if Android even has a comparable file sharing tool.

To solve this, Google is introducing new requirements that OEMs have to meet if they want to bundle Google Mobile Services (GMS) — which includes Google Play Services, Google Play Store, and other proprietary Google apps — on their devices. These requirements are enumerated in the GMS Requirements document, which was recently updated to list every requirement that devices launching with Android 15 have to meet in order to bundle GMS. According to this document, devices that launch with Android 15 or higher are required to “integrate Google’s proximity-based device visibility user consent screen” in their setup wizard.

This page will let you choose your device visibility setting, i.e. who can share with you. While you can already do this from Quick Share’s settings or its tile, the benefit of adding this option to the setup wizard is that people who aren’t aware of the feature’s existence will learn about it. That’s because the page also includes a brief explanation of Quick Share, as we showed off a few months ago.

Although Google says its Quick Share setup page is mandatory for devices launching with Android 15 or higher, it won’t require every device to use Google’s version of the page. That’s because Google carved out an exception for devices that implement a “custom Quick Share client integrating Google’s Nearby SDK.” The only custom Quick Share client that I know of that integrates Google’s Nearby SDK is Samsung’s version of Quick Share available on Galaxy devices. Thus, Galaxy devices won’t have to show Google’s Quick Share setup page, but I wouldn’t be surprised if Samsung implements its own version of this page anyway.