Quick Share in Chrome OS may finally be as fast as your phone

Google’s Chrome OS operating system has many great features that help you integrate your Android smartphone with your Chromebook. Most of these cross-device features fall under the Phone Hub umbrella, but there’s an additional feature you’re probably already familiar with if you frequently share files between Android devices: Quick Share.

Quick Share (formerly Nearby Share) lets you share files between your Android device, Chromebook, and Windows PC. Similar to Android, this feature is built into the Chromebook’s operating system. However, unlike most Android devices, Chromebooks lack key connectivity features that allow for the fastest transfer speeds when sharing files via Quick Share, but this is set to change soon.

Quick Share supports file transfer via Bluetooth or Wi-Fi. Bluetooth is used to scan for and connect to nearby devices, but is typically not used for actual file transfers. Because data transmission speeds are significantly slower than Wi-Fi, it is a last resort if you are unable to establish a proper Wi-Fi connection.

On Android, Chrome OS, and Windows, establishing a Wi-Fi connection is very easy by simply connecting the sending and receiving devices to the same Wi-Fi network. However, if you’re sharing files between two or more Android devices, they don’t even need to be connected to the same Wi-Fi access point for the fastest transfer speeds. This is because Quick Share on Android can take advantage of Wi-Fi Direct. Peer-to-peer Wi-Fi.

Wi-Fi Direct is a standard that allows Wi-Fi-enabled devices to connect directly to each other without the need for intermediary routers or access points. One device (the sender) creates a temporary Wi-Fi hotspot that other devices (the recipient) can connect to. Unlike the built-in Wi-Fi hotspot feature on most Android smartphones, if you just want to share files between Android devices, you can configure your network settings to create or join a Wi-Fi Direct network. No need to mess around. This is because Quick Share leverages Android’s Wi-Fi Direct API to create a network on the sending device, and the receiving device automatically connects to that network.

Thanks to Wi-Fi Direct, Quick Share can turn the sending device into a portable Wi-Fi hotspot regardless of its location, so Android devices connect to the same access point for the best file transfer speeds. There’s no need. Data transfer over a Wi-Fi Direct connection is theoretically faster than a traditional Wi-Fi connection because there is no overhead from routers or other devices on the same network competing for bandwidth. Other factors can also affect transfer speeds, such as the distance to the access point and the specifications of your router’s Wi-Fi chip. Additionally, it’s not always easy (or cheap) to connect all your devices to the same wireless network, especially when you’re traveling.

Wi-Fi Direct comes to Chrome OS

It’s clear that peer-to-peer Wi-Fi connections are the best medium for sharing files via Quick Share, but unfortunately Chrome OS doesn’t support Wi-Fi Direct. However, the Chrome OS team has been working on implementing support for peer-to-peer Wi-Fi for the past few months, so this situation is expected to change in the future. A number of code changes based on the “p2p” topic have been merged into his Chromium Gerrit, and just a few days ago, a code change was merged that adds a feature flag to enable Wi-Fi Direct in Chrome OS.

The description of this feature flag is as follows: Enables the WiFi direct functionalities in ChromeOS. Although the flag description does not directly specify Quick Share, the patch description states that the flag’s purpose is to “enable or disable Nearby Share Wi-Fi Direct Media.” Additionally, one comment in the patched file states that enabling this flag “enables the Nearby Share feature to utilize Wi-Fi P2P to share data.” Nearby Share was removed from the flag description because Wi-Fi Direct can be used by other applications, such as: WiDi Streaming Cast (i.e. wireless display streaming).

We don’t know when Wi-Fi Direct support will roll out to existing Chromebooks, but this flag should appear in the Chrome OS preview track soon. We don’t know when Chrome OS Quick Share will be updated to use Wi-Fi Direct. However, given that peer-to-peer Wi-Fi standards are outdated compared to his Wi-Fi chips in modern devices, many existing Chromebooks are likely to support this feature once it rolls out. there is. Hopefully, Google will show some of this love to its Windows client for Quick Share. Quick Share similarly lacks Wi-Fi Direct support, even though Microsoft appears to provide that API.