Android to get a brilliant feature Apple has offered for years. You'll appreciate it if you use both a phone and a tablet

One of the minor but immensely useful features that Apple has offered its users since 2014 is the Handoff function. Thanks to it, you can seamlessly start writing an email on your iPhone and finish it on your Mac, or open a webpage on your iPad that you were just looking at in Safari on your phone. Android has not had a similar privilege for so long, and owners of multiple devices from the Google ecosystem had to settle for opening tabs, sending links via communication apps, or searching in history. But that is now changing. At the Google I/O 2026 conference, the American giant introduced the Continue On feature.

Start on your phone and continue on your tablet exactly where you left off

The principle of the Continue On feature is surprisingly simple. For example, if you open a specific document in Google Docs on your phone, a suggestion with the app’s phone icon will appear on your tablet’s desktop (more precisely, in the dock). By clicking on it, you will be able to immediately continue the work you interrupted, but on the second device.

In practice, it’s immensely useful in situations where you start reading an article on your phone on the bus, then sit down at your tablet at home and want to open the page on a larger display. Instead of searching your history or re-finding the link, the system will offer you to continue. The same will apply to Gmail – if you open a specific email on your phone, thanks to Continue On, a suggestion to open that very email thread will pop up on your tablet.

Seamless transition not only to apps but also to the browser

To be able to continue working on your tablet in this way, you don’t even need to have the respective application installed. Google has also made sure that the feature can handle the transition to the browser. So, if you don’t have Docs on your tablet, the system will be able to redirect you directly to the web version of the service.

Will the feature eventually come to laptops?

Initially, Continue On will support only one direction – moving from phone to tablet. However, Google has confirmed that the feature is technically designed to be two-way. Over time, it should therefore be possible to move work in the opposite direction, from tablet to phone, and probably also between other types of devices.

Furthermore, in the future, connectivity with Googlebook laptops, which Google teased last week, is offered. This would symbolically close the ecosystem, giving users a practical way to conveniently switch between all their devices.

When will Continue On be available?

The feature will first be testable in the Android 17 RC1 build, which is the first “release candidate” developer version. Google has not yet announced the exact release date, but it is expected to arrive within weeks. The stable version of Android 17 will then likely arrive on Pixel phones during the summer, and other manufacturers should gradually integrate Continue On into their custom UIs (and hopefully they will indeed do so).

Android to get a brilliant feature Apple has offered for years. You'll appreciate it if you use both a phone and a tablet Adam Kurfürst News Adam Kurfürst News

An important prerequisite for smooth functioning is, of course, that app developers adopt Continue On in the foreseeable future. Google’s own apps like Docs, Gmail, or Chrome will likely be among the first, but for third-party apps, the path might be longer. Without a specific app supporting it, the suggestion to continue in the tablet’s dock simply won’t pop up.

Which situation in your daily life would most benefit from Continue On?

Sources: Google, The Verge, 9to5Google