How to Stop Android’s ‘Nearby Share’ From Using Mobile Data

Nearby Share permits clients, without wanting to introduce outsider applications, to appreciate quick and short proximity file and document transfers. However, a lot of users are having issues with Nearby Share using up their data, and they are not very pleased about that. Nearby Share is very much like Apple’s AirDrop, except that Google brought it out 9 years later than their counterparts at Apple. The feature permits the sharing of basic records, for example, music, photographs, recordings, and other zipped files.

Nearby Share automatically chooses which convention to use to send and get records relying upon the sender’s and receiver’s connection status. And in case you’re into gaming, odds are you’ve viewed as it to send or get APK records and even the substance of a games OBB envelope. Nearby Share can either utilize Bluetooth, Bluetooth Low Energy, WebRTC, or distributed WiFi. This enables clients to share records in any event, when they are disconnected.

How to Stop Android's 'Nearby Share' From Using Mobile Data

A Brief History of Mobile Connectivity

Only just a little over a decade ago, Bluetooth and Infrared were the two major forms of connectivity technology. If you were born at least a couple of years before the year 2000, you probably were lucky enough to get to experience the wonderful powers of infrared technology. Remember having to hold both connected devices side-by-side, making sure to stay still as the Statue of Liberty to avoid breaking the connection between the two phones? It’s hard to imagine living life like that again in 2020, right? Some of you may even wonder what the developers of infrared technology were thinking when they made infrared, but at the time, it was the best thing since sliced bread.

Bluetooth was like the big brother of infrared and was less strenuous to use, and also delivered relatively higher connectivity speeds than infrared. Nonetheless, when compared with today’s technology, Bluetooth is painfully and shockingly slow. While Bluetooth still remains relevant today as opposed to the now-defunct infrared technology, Bluetooth’s relevance is mostly limited to connecting peripheral devices like speakers, earphones, earbuds, headphones, and game controllers to their host devices. And although some people still use Bluetooth sometimes to transfer files of small sizes, other third-party applications like Xender and ShareIt are often more favoured over the relatively old-fashioned Bluetooth technology.

Enter Android’s Nearby Share

Less than two months ago, Google launched Nearby Share on Android to help Android users worldwide share and exchanges files, documents, music, videos, etc with more ease than ever before, both online and offline. It is available on all Android devices that currently run on Android 6.0 (Marshmallow) and above. You can read more about Google’s Nearby Share on Google’s official blog here.

How to Send More Files While Using Less Data

Firstly, ensure that both the sender’s and recipient’s devices are running a minimum of Android 6.0 (Marshmallow) and above. Open up your device’s Settings app and search for Nearby Share. Once you have successfully entered the Nearby Share user interface, look out for the option labelled “Data”. Click on that and you will be presented with three options on how you prefer to share or receive files. You can do so via mobile data (obviously you shouldn’t select this), Wi-Fi only, or Without internet (obviously your best bet by a large mile). Simply apply the changes that you have just made, and the next time you use Nearby Share, your mobile data will be left untouched.

android nearby share data usage

We hope that this article has been very helpful to you. If you have any further questions about Google’s new Nearby Share for Android, kindly let us know in the comments section and we would love to help you out as best as we can. Cheers and good luck. Happy sharing!

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