Frequently Asked Questions
Air Sharing
Although no longer available for new purchases,
Air Sharing is still available for re-download.
See notes on re-downloading a purchased app in Apple’s Knowledge Base.
General
What is Air Sharing?
Air Sharing is an app designed to let you use your iOS as an external hard drive. Access documents on Google Docs, Dropbox, Box.net, FTP, WebDAV, IMAP & POP3 mail servers, SSH, and more. View all your files, search PDFs, image slide shows, bookmarks on the go. Air Sharing also allows you to print your files directly from your iPhone. No special software needed.
Which iOS devices does Air Sharing support?
Air Sharing works on any iOS device that can run iOS version 5.1 or higher.
Which files types are supported by Air Sharing?
• iWork (Pages, Numbers, Keynote)
• Microsoft Office (Word, Excel, and PowerPoint), subject to iOS compatibility
• Web archives (web pages downloaded by Safari)
• HTML web page
• RTF (Rich Text Format) and RTFD (with embedded images)
• Plain text (many file extensions) with auto-detection of character encoding
• Source code (C/C++, Objective C/C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, XML, shell scripts, Perl, Ruby, Python, and more) with syntax color-coding
• Movies, audio, and images (standard iOS formats)
• PDF (even password-protected, with Search, table of contents, thumbnails, Go To Page
Can you connect via SMB or AFP to Air Sharing?
No. Air Sharing does not currently support those options.
Why can’t I use Google Cloud Storage with Air Sharing?
While we do support Google Docs, Google hasn’t chosen to integrate their Cloud service with Google docs. In addition to this, Google requires that you use their custom API to access your Google Storage, which is not compatible with Air Sharing at this time.
Why can’t I copy files or folders to Google Docs?
Google Docs is a read-only server on Air Sharing, and as such can’t be changed from the Air Sharing interface. You will need to use a web browser to access your Google account to make any permanent changes to the files stored in Google Docs.
Can I hook up Air Sharing to a drive on an Apple Base Station?
Air Sharing can connect to these network drives, but it will need a computer to act as a bridge between the two. This is because Air Sharing needs an operating system to map itself to before it can go about accessing files stored on a network drive.
This is the same issue presented by trying to connect to a Time Capsule. If a computer is connected to the drive, you can connect to the computer directly from Air Sharing and then browse to the network drive under the Volumes directory.
Printing
What printers are supported with Air Sharing?
As long as you have your printer shared through a Mac or Linux machine and your device is connected to the same wireless network as that computer, you can print to pretty much any kind of printer out there. Printers shared on Windows machines, or printers that require authentication for print jobs are not supported.
Air Print suddenly stopped working for me. What can I do?
Power cycle your device and be sure to remove Air Sharing from being backgrounded. If that doesn’t work, on the iPad go into Setttings -> General -> Reset -> Reset Network Settings. Note: This will take out all the wireless networks and printers, so some reconfiguration will be required.
For a list of Air Print compatible printers, please go to the following link:
Why can’t I print my Excel documents from Air Sharing?
Excel isn’t currently supported for either Air Print or Avatron Print.
Troubleshooting
Why does Air Sharing keep saying that “Sharing is Disabled”?
This has been known to happen every now and again after an update, or after using the Skype app. If you have been using Skype on your iPad, fully close both Skype and Air Sharing, making sure that neither are running in the background, then open Air Sharing.
If you are not using Skype or another app that uses port 80, go to Settings > WiFi and touch the blue arrow to the right or your network. Next, touch the ‘Forget This Network’ button. Then re-connect to your network. Now, open Air Sharing and check the WiFi symbol for your IP and Bonjour address.
If that doesn’t work, try removing Air Sharing from being backgrounded and reset your device. To do this, press the Home button twice, and locate Air Sharing on the dock. Press and hold on the Air Sharing icon for a few seconds until it begins to shake, and then press the red button in the upper left hand corner. To reset your device, press and hold the Home button and the On/Off button for 10-15 seconds. When it comes back up, reopen Air Sharing and check if the error persists.
My computer won’t connect properly/keeps dropping file transfers/runs into an Error 0x80070780
This particular error usually corresponds to a WebDAV issue that Windows runs into from time to time. There are a couple different workarounds that might help solve the issue.
The easiest solution would be to utilize a third party program called NetDrive. We recommend using NetDrive for several reasons: • It is “free for personal use.” • It is stable and works well. • It provides all the functionality that the XP and 7 Map Network Drive method should. • Troubleshooting broken XP installations is difficult, time consuming, and does not provide you with a better overall user experience than NetDrive.
Keep in mind that NetDrive isn’t compatible with 64-bit OS’s. If you are running 64-bit Windows 7, we recommend using AnyClient instead.
Once you have downloaded and installed NetDrive from the NetDrive web site at netdrive.net, open the NetDrive program. Click “New Site” and start entering the Air Sharing connection details in the right-hand panel. Select the Server Type of WebDAV before adding the Site IP and port.
Note that you should not prepend the IP address or URL with “http://”, and do not check “Connect as anonymous.” If you have not set a username and password within Air Sharing, leave those fields blank. Select any drive letter, and then click Connect. You will see a connection dialog window open. If you have enabled Sharing Security within Air Sharing, enter that user name and password now. If not, leave it blank and press Ok.
The mapped network drive will then appear, and you should be able to use it normally to drag and drop your files between your computer and your device.
Why is my WebDAV server not working?
With the near limitless number of configurations available to WebDAV servers, it is simply not possible for us to ensure compatibility with every permutation. We have limited our focus to those that service the most customers at a given time. For a list of the more universally compatible cloud server formats Air Sharing supports, please visit our website:
Why won’t my video files play on Air Sharing?
Air Sharing only supports the native movie formats, which are .mov, .m4a, and .mp4.