App ‘Handoff’ coming to Android 17 for cross-device continuity

Abner Li | Feb 13 2026 - 3:50 pm PT

Besides what was detailed in Google’s blog post, another new “cross-device continuity” feature coming to Android 17 is “Handoff.”

Google describes Handoff as a new user-facing feature that “runs in the background” and an API for developers. This will let you “start an app activity on one Android device and transition it to another Android device.” Google will use the launcher and taskbar to surface available activities from your nearby devices.

Handoff can launch the “same native Android app” if it’s “installed and available on the receiving device.”

In this app-to-app flow, the user is deep-linked to the designated activity.

Android 17 will also offer “app-to-web Handoff” as a fallback option.

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For developers, “Handoff support is implemented on a per-activity basis.”

To enable Handoff, call the setHandoffEnabled() method for the activity. Additional data may need to be passed along with the handoff so the recreated activity on the receiving device can restore appropriate state. Implement the onHandoffActivityRequested() callback to return a HandoffActivityData object which contains details that specify how Handoff should handle and recreate the activity on the receiving device.

We’re not seeing anything live in Android 17 Beta 1. No other developer documentation or details appear to be available today, including what form factors this will be offered on. For example, the mentioned taskbar is just on foldables, tablets, and other large screen Android devices. You can imagine how such a continuity feature might work with desktop Android, like starting to compose an email on your phone and then finishing that on your laptop.