Google makes cross-platform communication easier with “copresence”

There are many different ways in which we can transfer files from one device to another. It can be sent via messaging apps, emails, cloud syncing, and so on. However it seems that Google could be working on a way to automate that process and make it more contextual. This is apparently called “copresence” and it has been spotted on the Chromium bug tracker.

Several months ago, we discussed something called Nearby, a project that – at the time – seemed to be Google’s effort to let “people, places, and things” know when a user is, well, nearby. It seems that Google is still hard at work on its effort to connect various devices to each other and their surroundings, but Copresence (an internal name for this functionality) may have a more specific scope in this effort than we first estimated, apparently including iOS devices in the fun. Copresence, which we saw a glimpse of in a recent teardown, appears to be aimed at letting nearby Android and iOS devices communicate with one another in a variety of ways, exchanging files, photos, directions, messages, or other content, essentially making Copresence a sort of contactless, cross-platform version of Android Beam.