Why is AirDrop support disabled by default on Samsung Galaxy?

Samsung will officially start rolling out AirDrop support over Quick Share on Galaxy S26 devices this week, but I’m personally curious as to why it’s turned off by default.

On Sunday night, Samsung confirmed plans to start rolling out AirDrop support on the Galaxy S26 over Quick Share. first came to Google’s Pixel 10 series as a complete surprise at the end of last year.

This is great news in part because it’s the first expansion beyond Pixel devices, and not only does it mean that more devices could support it, but it also shows that Google is pretty confident that Apple won’t somehow kill the feature.

So why isn’t it active for everyone?

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AirDrop support over Quick Share on Google Pixel devices is available as soon as the feature arrives on the device. On Samsung Galaxy devices, you need to enable it via the link found in Settings > Connected Devices > Quick Sharing > Share with Apple Devices.

This is a very strange choice by Samsung. The company explained that the addition of AirDrop support is “part of Samsung’s ongoing efforts to improve compatibility between operating systems” and is in direct contrast to the idea of turning it off by default. “Security” also seems like a difficult explanation, given that both sides have to go into “Everyone” mode for this to work in the first place.

In general, the idea of having a transition is like this probably good idea, but having the ability to turn it off rather than requiring it to be on seems like a smarter play.

I’m sure there’s an explanation for this, but it makes no sense. What do you think?