The feature, dubbed “Tap to share” in leaked One UI 9 builds, carries a straightforward description that directs users to hold the top of their phone close to another device to initiate a file transfer, with strings in the code confirming sending and receiving states during the exchange.

Early signs of NFC-based file sharing first spotted by Android Authority in Samsung’s One UI 8.5 in September 2025, surfacing under an experimental Labs section with animations suggesting proximity-based transfers, though the feature went quiet shortly after and appeared limited to Samsung hardware at the time.

How the feature spread beyond Samsung

The scope of the feature expanded significantly when Google Play Services code from November 2025 revealed a separate proximity-based contact sharing function referencing an internal system called Gesture Exchange, which mirrors the behaviour of Apple’s NameDrop for swapping contact details between nearby devices.

Quick Share in One UI 9 also references Gesture Exchange, suggesting the underlying mechanism extends beyond contact sharing and can trigger full file transfers, with NFC acting as the initiation layer while Quick Share handles the actual data movement between devices.

The most significant indicator of a platform-wide rollout comes from Android 17 beta and Canary builds, where a system-level service called Tap To Share appears at the OS layer.

The parallel development across both Samsung and Google codebases mirrors the two companies’ previous collaboration on Quick Share itself, which unified Samsung’s nearby sharing tools with Google’s own infrastructure into a single cross-device standard.

A stable release tied to Android 17 remains the most likely delivery window, with Samsung devices potentially serving as the first hardware to support the feature given the depth of One UI 9 references already present in current builds.