Google’s Nearby Share will soon let users share to multiple devices at once

It wasn’t that long ago that we had an exciting development in the Nearby Share experience for Chromebooks, allowing users to finally be able to not only start using Nearby Share in the Beta and Dev Channels of Chrome OS (it is still not in the Stable Channel), but also begin flipping the switch to temporarily become visible to everyone. We argued at the time that this setting was crucial in getting users to adopt the not-yet-fully-release feature, and I stand by that. When it does all finally roll out and become available in the Stable Channel of Chrome OS, it looks like yet another useful feature could come along for the ride.

Nearby Share to groups

In a recent find by the folks over at XDA, it seems Google is hard at work prepping the ability for Nearby Share to reach out from your device and share one or more files to not just one device at a time, but to multiple other devices as well. Shown in a quick video, the feature works as you’d expect, allowing you to select multiple targets for your files final destination and the whole thing works quite well.

XDA also notes that this update is coming along with the aforementioned ability to become visible to everyone on Android. This upcoming feature will allow you to become widely visible to everyone for a short time or for as long as you’d like, extending the current functionality we are seeing in the Beta and Dev Channels of Chrome OS at this point. On the Chromebook front, you currently only have the ability to toggle the ‘visible to everyone’ feature for a limited time and I’d wager that’s what most people should do. However, having the option to keep it on for extended periods will be handy for some.

We’re hopeful we’ll see this feature arrive soon on Chrome OS soon and we’ll be on the lookout for it over the coming weeks. I’d imagine Google is prepping the service for a full unveil on Android and Chrome OS at I/O 2021 in May, but there’s no proof this is happening in that time frame. The timing just seems to line up, though, and I know I’m not the only one ready for Nearby Share to be fully rolled out to Android and Chrome OS so we can start reliably moving files between our devices in a seamless, fast and simple way.