Cannot AirDrop to Mac's

[thatmac]

Hello!

We are running macOS 14.6.1 on a fleet of iMac's and Macbook Pros. The Mac's can AirDrop to other devices (EG it can see my phone and sends files successfully to it) but the Mac itself doesn't appear to AirDrop too. (So I cannot AirDrop from my phone to the Mac). We've different various devices (Managed and non managed) and the Mac doesn't appear as an AirDrop destination of any of them. These devices are new so we can't test with other versions of macOS (So we don't know if it's a new thing or always been like this!).

The Mac's are all MDM managed and we have tried being on the same WiFi network (And also not being on the same WiFi network). They have WiFi and Bluetooth enabled. We tried the solution here but it didn't make any difference (We checked, the command does the value correctly).

Has anyone else seen this or have any ideas on how to fix it?!

Thank you in advance 

[danlaw777]

CIS recommends that airdrop be disabled due to privacy concerns, do you have anything blocking it?

[thatmac]

We do not - it's explicitly set to not block (IE Allow). On the Mac's themselves (While we are testing) we've been making sure AirDrop is set to "Everyone for 10 minutes". The AirDrop option appears and let us click it on the Mac so it's not like it's greyed out or anything.

We only allow it on this specific subset of our fleet due to their use case.

[obi-k]

Is the Mac using VPN?

[RaGL]

Did you also make sure, that "Do not Disturb" / "Focus" is off?

[thatmac]

No VPN and no Focus/DnD is turned on either 

[easyedc]

Are you running additional security software? Generally those will also block AirDrop functionality. 

[thatmac · Accepted solution]

I can't believe we didn't check this first - you're right! It turns our our security software (ESET in this case)'s firewall was blocking it. Allowing TCP 8770 through it's firewall allowed AirDrop to start working.

Thank you all for your help!