Learn how to drag and drop text, photos, links, videos, documents, audio files, PDFs, and more from one iPhone app to another with a simple on-screen gesture.
Instead of using the normal copy & paste action, iOS and iPadOS also allow you to drag text or file from one app and drop it elsewhere. This method is often faster and more seamless.
Before you begin, you must know that not every app supports dragging and dropping text and media.
Drag and drop text between apps
1) Open an iPhone or iPad app like Safari and select the text you want to copy.
2) Now touch and hold the selected text, drag it a little, and it will detach in a floating tile.
3) Without lifting your finger from the screen, use your other hand or finger to swipe up to the Home Screen.
4) Now, go inside the app (ie. Notes) where you want to paste this text. You can also create a new note or document in the app where you want to paste the text. However, when you do that, it’s important you do not lift the finger that’s holding the text you are copying.
5) With the final location in order, simply drop the selected text in the app by lifting your finger. Before you are about to do that, you will see a green plus button, signifying the text is about to be pasted here.
Drag and drop photos, videos, PDFs, and other files
Imagine you want to move some images from the Photos app to a document in the Pages app or PDFs from one folder in the Files app to another.
In these cases, you can select one or more images > touch and hold it > drag a little > swipe to the Home Screen and go inside an app or another section of the same app > lift your finger to drop the files you were holding up to now.
The process is similar to what we have explained in the “text” section above. Furthermore, just like text, you can instantly tell whenever the app supports drag and drop by the existence of a green-colored plus symbol (+) that appears in the top-right corner of the floating bundle.
This approach also lets you select several photos from a Google Search result in Safari and add them to the iPhone Photos app, Files app, Notes, or elsewhere. All you need to do is touch and hold one image, drag it, and then tap other images to add them to the bundle. Finally, go inside another app and drop the bundle of images there.
You can try out the drag-and-drop gesture in your favorite apps to see if it works.
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