AirDrop is wonderful right up until it is not. The Mac is asleep, or in another room, or the phone insists it cannot see it, and you end up emailing yourself a screenshot. I wrote a whole guide to the alternatives before Droppy had a phone app. Now it has one, and the share sheet is where most of the value sits, because it is the one place every iPhone app already knows how to send things.
My Droppy: the Mac, from anywhere
My Droppy is the share sheet target that points at your own Mac. It asks one question, where should this go, with three answers that map to the three places Droppy keeps things on the Mac.
- Clipboard
- Text and links usually want this. The item joins the Mac's clipboard history, with the phone as its source, and is ready to paste on the Mac.
- Basket
- A holding area for files you are about to use. Photos, PDFs and screenshots sent here are waiting when you sit down. The Basket guide explains why a holding area beats the Downloads folder.
- Shelf
- The longer-lived surface at the top of the Mac. Send something here when it should stay around for a while, beside the notes and widgets you already keep there.
The part that makes this reliable is what happens when the Mac is not there. AirDrop fails. Email goes through but lands in the wrong place. My Droppy queues the item on the phone and delivers it the next time the Mac is reachable, so a photo shared on the train is on the Basket when you open the laptop at the office. Nothing vanishes for being sent at the wrong moment.
Cloud link: for people who do not have Droppy
The other share sheet entry is Cloud link. It uploads the file to Droppy Cloud and puts a normal HTTPS link on the phone's clipboard, without opening the Droppy app at all. That link is for someone else: a client, a group chat, a person who will never install anything. The same limits apply as on the Mac, and they are checked on the phone before the upload starts, so an oversized file is refused by name right away instead of after a long wait.
| Droppy Cloud limit | Value |
|---|---|
| Per file | 200 MB |
| Per link | 1 GB, up to 25 files |
| Lifetime | 3 days, then it expires |
| Delete early | Yes, from the Cloud tab, and the files go for good, link included |
| Encryption | A normal HTTPS link, not end to end encrypted, by design |
That last row is the one to remember. Sync between your own devices is sealed with keys no server sees. A share link is the opposite by intent: the whole point is that anyone with the link can open it. The app says so in the Cloud tab rather than letting the two blur into each other. Every link you make, from either device, is listed in the cloud links store with a copy button and a real delete.
Press Send to watch one photo go from the share sheet to the Mac's Basket. If the Mac were asleep, it would wait there on the phone instead.
Or ask Siri
Droppy for iPhone registers nine actions with the Shortcuts app, and six of them come with a Siri phrase that needs no setup at all. They also appear in Spotlight and can be assigned to the Action button on a recent iPhone.
| Say | What happens |
|---|---|
| Paste to Droppy, or Send my clipboard to Droppy | The phone's clipboard joins the Mac's history |
| Start a focus session with Droppy | The Pomodoro timer starts in the Mac's notch |
| Stop my Droppy focus timer | The timer ends |
| Start Droppy High Alert | The Mac stays awake |
| Stop Droppy High Alert | The Mac may sleep again |
| Check my Droppy timers | Siri reads back what is running |
The three actions without a phrase take a parameter, which is why they live in the Shortcuts app instead of a spoken sentence: Send text to Mac, Send files to Mac, and the minute count on the two start actions. Send files to Mac is the one to build an automation around. A shortcut that grabs the last screenshot and sends it to the Basket, bound to the Action button, is a two-minute build.
Choosing between them
Sending to yourself: My Droppy, and pick the destination by how long it should live. Clipboard for text you will paste in the next minute, Basket for files you will use today, Shelf for things that stay. Sending to someone else: Cloud link. Sending hands-free: a Siri phrase for the clipboard, a shortcut for files. None of these require the Mac to be awake at the moment you press share, which is the difference from every AirDrop workaround I have tried.