Rita El Khoury / Android Authority
TL;DR
- Samsung’s Quick Share feature allows users to share files over the cloud with temporary Samsung Cloud download links.
- Google’s Quick Share could soon be able to intercept these download links and open them within the app.
- This will allow for a consistent user experience between Samsung Galaxy and other Android devices.
Last year, Google and Samsung joined forces to harmonize their file-sharing solutions for the greater good of the Android platform. As a result, Android’s Nearby Share was renamed to Quick Share, the same as Samsung’s solution on Galaxy devices. More recently, we’ve spotted Google and Samsung redesigning Quick Share to look similar to each other’s solution. We’re in for further harmonization, as Google’s Quick Share will soon be able to intercept download links from Samsung’s Quick Share.
An APK teardown helps predict features that may arrive on a service in the future based on work-in-progress code. However, it is possible that such predicted features may not make it to a public release.
In addition to Wi-Fi Direct and Bluetooth-based file transfers, Samsung Galaxy users can upload files to Quick Share and share a download link or QR code with other users. These files are temporarily stored in Samsung Cloud for 48 hours.
Google Play Service v25.23.30 beta includes code that allows Google’s Quick Share solution to intercept these Samsung Cloud download links. We managed to activate the feature, allowing Google’s Quick Share to open the URL in its own interface instead of the default browser. Here’s a video demo of the upcoming feature in action:
On tapping a Samsung Cloud link, you can see that Google’s Quick Share is asking to turn on Bluetooth (which is a check it does when initializing the Receive tab). Once the interface is loaded, Google’s Quick Share attempts to download the file and shows a loading bar, although the title text wrongly says “QR code scan.”
You can also see the text “If the automatic download doesn’t start, you can download from your browser.” We can either wait for the download to complete, cancel it, or open the link in the default browser, where you can download the file manually.
As you can see in the video demo, the feature is still a work in progress and doesn’t work. If this moves ahead, it will bring an even more cohesive user experience between both versions of Quick Share, which will ultimately help the Android platform at large.
