Do AirDrop and Nearby Share use NFC?
No. Both discover nearby devices using Bluetooth and then transfer over a direct Wi-Fi connection. NFC plays no part in either, which is why they work across a table rather than requiring two handsets to touch. The tap based sharing that once existed has been retired.
What they actually use
Both systems solve the same two problems in the same order: find the other device, then move the data. Bluetooth handles the finding, because it reaches across a room and costs little to keep listening. A direct Wi-Fi connection handles the moving, because files are large.
NFC appears nowhere in that sequence. Apple documents AirDrop as using Bluetooth Low Energy to discover and peer to peer Wi-Fi to transfer, and Google documents the Android equivalent the same way.
Why not NFC
Because the interaction would be worse, not just slower.
Sharing a file usually happens between people sitting near each other, not touching. Requiring two phones to be held together would mean interrupting a conversation, taking a case off, hunting for the antenna and holding still. Bluetooth discovery lets a list of nearby people appear without anyone doing anything physical.
And the transfer itself could not happen over NFC anyway, so NFC could only ever have been the discovery step. Once you accept a second radio for the payload, using that radio for discovery too removes a dependency rather than adding convenience.
What tapping two phones used to do
There was a period when touching two handsets together initiated a transfer. NFC carried the connection details and a faster radio carried the file, which is the handover pattern working exactly as designed.
It was withdrawn. The reasons were product decisions rather than technical failures: discovery over Bluetooth reaches further, needs no physical contact, and works between devices whose owners never learned where their NFC antenna was.
People who remember this feature often conclude that NFC on phones has been crippled. It is more accurate to say the industry found a better answer for this particular job and kept NFC for the jobs it is still the best answer to.
What NFC is still for between two phones
Very little, and being honest about that is more useful than pretending otherwise. Card emulation means a phone can act like a card in front of a terminal, which is a different scenario. Two ordinary phones exchanging data directly is not something either platform encourages today.
Where NFC remains unbeatable is between a phone and an object that has no battery and no user interface. A card, a sticker, a poster, a door. Nothing else can do that, which is why comparing it with phone to phone sharing was always a category error.
Frequently asked questions
Does AirDrop work with an Android phone?
The two systems are separate and do not interoperate. Cross platform sharing generally means falling back to a link, a messaging application or a shared network location.
Why did tap to share disappear?
It was replaced by discovery mechanisms that work at a distance and require no physical contact. The underlying handover idea is still used to pair accessories, where touching an object is natural.
Can NFC still start a file transfer between phones?
Not through any feature either platform offers to ordinary users. Applications can in principle use NFC to exchange connection details, but nothing in the standard interface does so any more.
Is Bluetooth discovery a privacy concern?
It involves your device advertising or listening for nearby devices, and both platforms restrict this heavily and require explicit user action to be visible. It is a different exposure from NFC, where nothing happens until you touch something.