Share files and notes between devices using Drop

Microsoft has finally added its long-awaited Drop feature to Edge. This new tool, which we first wrote about in Issue 645, based on a beta version of the browser, lets you easily share files and notes across your desktop PC, laptop and mobile devices, saving you the trouble of emailing them to yourself.

Drop isn’t yet enabled by default in Edge, which means you need to activate it manually. To do so, type edge://flags in the browser’s address bar, press Enter and find the Enable Drop experiment. Click the dropdown menu next to it, select Enabled and restart Edge.

When the browser reopens, click the three-dot menu and choose Settings then Appearance. Scroll down to the ‘Select which buttons to show on the toolbar’ section and switch on Drop ( 1 in our screenshot below). The Drop icon, which looks like a paper aeroplane, will now appear on Edge’s toolbar 2.

Click the Drop button to launch the tool then click Start. To send a file to another device, either click the plus icon at the bottom of the Drop panel 3 and select the item on your hard drive, or drag and drop it directly to the panel. Alternatively, you can write yourself a note by typing into the text box and clicking the Send button.

Any content you share in Drop is also automatically uploaded to a folder in your Onedrive account called Microsoft Edge Drop Files.

To access shared files and notes in the Edge app for Android, tap the three-dot button at the bottom of the browser and select Drop – you’ll need to be signed into your Microsoft account. You can also use Drop to send items from the Edge mobile browser to your PC.