Google plans to add an analogue of Apple Handoff to Android 17

Google is working on a new system-wide feature called Task Continuity that will allow users to seamlessly continue working across Android devices. Users will be able to start a task on their smartphone and instantly resume it on their tablet or PC without any additional apps, Android Authority reports.

Until now, this kind of experience has been virtually exclusive to Apple. Its Handoff feature allows you to switch between iPhone and Mac within a single ecosystem. In the Android world, solutions like Microsoft's Phone Link have proven to be limited and inconvenient — they only work in one direction and require special code to integrate.

Google plans to address these issues by unifying Android and ChromeOS into a single platform. This will allow Task Continuity to be integrated directly into the Android framework and create a single API for developers and device manufacturers.

This makes the experience as simple as possible. For example, a user reads a document in Chrome on their phone and then puts it aside. An icon with that session appears on the tablet bar, and by clicking on it, they can instantly resume the document in the same place on another device.

The feature will work in both directions and will not require third-party applications or special modifications from manufacturers.

Although the first mentions of Task Continuity have already appeared in the Android 16 code, the full launch is estimated to only happen with the release of Android 17 in 2026.