Android 14 allows drag-and-drop even if you need to open an app from the homescreen

Ben Schoon | May 19 2023 - 8:08 am PT

Google’s Android 14 update is, so far, not all that major, but there have been quite a few nice quality-of-life tweaks. One of those is found in drag-and-drop, which in Android 14 will support moving content between apps even if they aren’t open yet.

Starting with the latest Android 14 beta drag-and-drop now supports the ability to move content between apps throughout the entire system. In Android 13 and prior versions where drag-and-drop is supported, users are limited to only moving content between apps that are actively opening, which really limits the usefulness of the feature.

In that existing place, drag-and-drop can pull a picture or text from one app and drop it in another, but only if those two apps are open in a split-screen view. When drag-and-drop is being used, Android disables the navigation gesture to go back home or even enter the recent apps menu.

With Android 14, that’s changing. @Nail_Sadykov highlighted on Twitter that Android 14 will allow drag-and-drop to continue even as you move through the OS, even to the homescreen and opening another app. This greatly extends the utility of drag-and-drop, as seen in the demo below.

This functionality is live now in Android 14 Beta 2, and should end up available to all when the new version drops later this year. Notably, iOS already supported this functionality, so it’s a bit overdue for Android to do the same.

Dylan Roussel contributed to this article.