Monday, October 17, 2011

AirDrop — Not just for wireless!

This post is meant for those of us with a bit more experience with the Command Line Interface.  If you aren't familiar with the command line in OS X, this post will still be useful to you, but take note that you should be very careful when using the command line.  Although nothing in this post is harmful to your computer, what we are about to do is unsupported by Apple.  I'm confident that there's nothing here that will damage your computer, but the point is, if you get into some trouble, or if this feature stops working for some reason, don't bother calling Apple for help.
  
AirDrop is a very cool and simple way to share files wirelessly with other Macs.  But what about computers that are hooked up to your network with a wired interface like Ethernet?  Not to worry, as you can trick OS X into using AirDrop with those Macs too.


(It is also important to note that these commands should be performed on the Mac with the wired connection.)


Go into the Terminal.app (/Applications/Utilities/Terminal... or type Command-Shift-U in the Finder to open the Utilities folder) and type the following:


defaults write com.apple.NetworkBrowser BrowseAllInterfaces 1


Hit return.  Now it's time to restart the Finder.  This can be achieved with the following command in the Terminal:


killall Finder


The Finder will restart, and the Mac with the wired connection can now use AirDrop.  If you want to turn off AirDrop on your wired Mac, change the 1 in the above command to a 0 as follows:


defaults write com.apple.NetworkBrowser BrowseAllInterfaces 0


Restart the Finder again with killall Finder and you should be back to your default configuration.

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