Quick Share visibility decides which nearby devices can even see your phone or PC, let alone send to it. One of the three modes is the right everyday setting, one is for sharing with people you know, and one opens you to every stranger in range — briefly, and on purpose.
On the phone the setting is called Who can share with you, and Google gives it three values. They sound similar and behave very differently — especially the detail that one of them only works while your screen is awake, and another keeps working with the screen off. The Windows app has the same idea in its own wording. This page explains each mode with its real consequence, then gives the safe default for home and for office use.
Your phone is visible only to devices signed in with the same Google account — your PC, your tablet, your second phone. Two details make this mode special: it works even when the screen is off, and transfers between your own devices are accepted automatically, with no popup to tap. That combination is exactly what a home desk wants and exactly why it should only ever point at machines you own.
In Contacts mode your phone is visible to nearby people saved in your contacts — and only while the screen is on and unlocked. Put the phone down, let it lock, and you disappear. It is the right mode for swapping files with family and colleagues whose numbers you already have, and the screen rule is its built-in safety: nobody can reach a phone that is sitting locked in your pocket.
Everyone mode makes your phone visible to any nearby Quick Share device — the mode you need when a stranger, a new phone, or a device on a different account must find you. Google designed it with a timer: after 10 minutes your visibility automatically returns to your previous setting. That auto-off is a safety feature, not a bug — if your phone "keeps turning Everyone off", it is doing its job.
While the Quick Share page itself is open in Receive mode, you are likewise visible to anyone nearby — closing that page ends it.
The PC app asks the matching question in its own words: who may see this computer — everyone nearby, friends and family, or only your devices. If you signed the app in with your Google account, Your devices is the setting that mirrors the phone's best mode: your own phone finds the PC instantly and transfers without prompts, while the PC stays invisible to the rest of the building.
Being visible is not the same as being open. A stranger who can see your device can send a request — you still have to tap Accept, and you should decline anything you did not arrange. The one exception is your own same-account devices, which auto-accept by design. One real-world trap: two nearby PCs with similar names. Before sending something private, confirm the exact name of the machine you mean to reach — "found a computer" is not proof it is yours.
See the modes changed live on a phone and a PC in this channel's video, and what each one looks like from the other device.
▶️ Watch Full VideoA stranger in Everyone mode can send you a request, but nothing arrives or runs without your acceptance — and your own devices are the only ones that skip the prompt. Decline requests you did not arrange, and a received file still has to be opened by you before it can do anything.
Because both devices are signed in with your Google account, Quick Share treats them as one owner and accepts automatically. That convenience is exactly why Your devices mode should only ever be used with machines that are truly yours.
No. Visibility here is local radio discovery — your device announces itself to Quick Share devices within a few metres. No location is published, and after 10 minutes the mode switches back to your previous setting by itself.