Disabling AirDrop from the command line

A new feature in 10.7 is AirDrop, a way to share files easily between machines that are on the same local network. Amazing-sounding as it is, there are some Mac environments where it makes sense to turn it off. See below the jump for how.

You can enable or disable AirDrop with the following defaults commands

Here’s how to turn AirDrop off:

defaults write com.apple.NetworkBrowser DisableAirDrop -bool YES

Here’s how to turn AirDrop back on:

defaults write com.apple.NetworkBrowser DisableAirDrop -bool NO

You’ll need to logout and log back in to see the changes.

I’ve also written a script that would set AirDrop to be disabled in the user template, which would disable AirDrop for all new users created after this point.

#!/bin/sh

# Disables AirDrop in Mac OS X 10.7.x for new users by setting
# the ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.NetworkBrowser.plist to
# include the key "DisableAirDrop" with a value of YES

defaults write /System/Library/User\ Template/English.lproj/Library/Preferences/com.apple.NetworkBrowser.plist DisableAirDrop -bool YES


The script above is also available from here.

Hat tip to Jared Nichols for figuring this out and sharing it on the Casper list.