You’re halfway through a long email on your phone when you realize it’s going to take forever to finish on a tiny screen. Usually, you’d have to save a draft, grab your tablet, open the app, and find that same spot again. But the latest Android 17 beta is trying to kill that friction for good.
The second beta release just landed, and it is leaning hard into a feature called cross-device handoff. It is exactly what it sounds like. It lets you push whatever you’re doing from one device to another with a single tap. It is a simple fix for a problem that has been annoying Android users for years.
Picking up where you left off
This isn’t just about syncing tabs in your browser anymore. Google wants your apps to stay alive across everything you own. If you are looking at a route on Google Maps on your phone, you can now throw it onto your tablet the second you get into your car or sit at your desk.
There is a new notification that pops up when you’re near another one of your logged-in devices. It asks if you want to move the task over. It feels fast, and more importantly, it feels like your devices are finally part of the same team rather than separate islands.
A better way to multitask
Beyond the handoff feature, there is a clever new trick for people who use tablets or big foldables. The taskbar is getting a makeover that makes it feel less like a mobile phone and more like a real computer. You can now pin apps and drag them into split-screen mode much faster than before.
- Improved window resizing that doesn’t glitch out
- A taskbar that stays put if you want it to
- Easier ways to drag and drop files between two open apps
So, what’s the catch? For now, this is still in the beta phase. That means it’s still a bit buggy, and you probably shouldn’t install it on the phone you rely on for work every day. But it shows a clear change in how Google thinks about our gadgets.
They are finally moving away from the idea that your phone is just a standalone tool. Instead, your tech is starting to follow you around. We will see if this level of polish makes it into the final version when it ships to everyone later this year.