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Airdrop fails to share video from Macbookair to iPhone.

Does anyone know how to easily and intuitively share video from a macbook to an iPhone? You would think this would be as easy as dragging and dropping. You'd be wrong. Airdrop isn't working at all. I get an error message on my phone: "Failed to save item. Save to iCloud Drive instead?" I switched from PC to Apple to avoid precisely this: waisting my time troubling devices.

Posted on Jun 18, 2019 1:27 AM

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Posted on Jun 18, 2019 9:35 AM

Yep. Doesn't help at all. There's some glitch in some recent update. I still can't Airdrop a video I made on my Mac using iMovie to my iPhone. Looks like they're not talking to each other. Glitch message reads as follows: "Failed to save item. Save to iCloud Drive instead?" When I tap yes, I get some corrupted file that I can't open on my phone.

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Jun 18, 2019 9:35 AM in response to BDAqua

Yep. Doesn't help at all. There's some glitch in some recent update. I still can't Airdrop a video I made on my Mac using iMovie to my iPhone. Looks like they're not talking to each other. Glitch message reads as follows: "Failed to save item. Save to iCloud Drive instead?" When I tap yes, I get some corrupted file that I can't open on my phone.

Jun 18, 2019 3:12 PM in response to BDAqua

Okay. Figured it out.


The new iMovie update includes ProRes on computers/notebooks. This level of quality uses a codex that cannot be read on iOS devices. There are two ways to create videos that can be shared to iOS devices:

1 - use HIGH (not Best - ProRes) quality when saving/creating/shareing the iMovie video file to the desktop. This will create an MP4 file which works just fine on iOS devices.

2 - Create that Highest - ProRes file for use with other apps or for uploading onto Youtube etc.

When the file is on the desktop, right click.

Select > encode selected video files (near the bottom)

Select > 480, 720, 1080 (**NOT Apple ProRes***).

That creates a .m4v file which also works just fine on iOS devices.

Airdrop fails to share video from Macbookair to iPhone.

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