Microsoft announced plenty of interesting stuff for Windows 11 at the ongoing Build 2025 conference. However, one feature apparently showed up unannounced during one of the sessions, revealing Microsoft borrowing a useful productivity feature from macOS.
The feature in question is called Handoff. It lets you move a task from your iPhone or iPad to your Mac (and vice versa) and seamlessly continue where you left off. Handoff is a pretty old feature—Apple introduced it nearly 11 years ago in iOS 8, and Microsoft itself explored this concept many years ago. In 2017, Microsoft announced Project Rome to allow developers to build cross-device experiences that can be moved between devices, but not much has been heard about it ever since. Now, the idea appears to be back.
In a now-deleted demo, one of Microsoft's product managers demonstrated how the feature works. Once Windows detects that you opened a compatible app on your device (presumably an Android smartphone or tablet), a new icon appears on the taskbar, allowing you to quickly transfer the experience to your PC and continue where you left off.
Here is how Aakash Varshney, a senior product manager for cross devices and experiences, describes it:
It’s a visual nudge that when clicked launches your app directly into the task, delivering a smooth intuitive handoff from PC to phone. Spotify launches and I’m instantly back in the same song, now playing on my PC. No need to search or start over, it’s a smooth one-click transition that keeps the music and user experience uninterrupted.
This experience will require some work from developers. Attracting developers to implement new client features in Windows has been a challenging task for Microsoft for many years (especially on Windows Phone), so it will be interesting to see how many apps will offer this cross-device capability. That is, of course, assuming Microsoft will ship it. For now, this feature has yet to see its public announcement.
Source: @phantomofearth on X | The Verge
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