What is the useful image sharing feature in iOS that Chrome OS could potentially adopt?
1Moving files between your smartphone and Chromebook used to be a headache for many users, as they had to either navigate to their device's file system or use a USB cable. Google finally made that process a breeze with the introduction of Nearby Share, which allows you to share text, images, files, or web pages from your Chromebook to a nearby Android device and vice versa. You can even share your Wi-Fi SSID, security configuration, and password with other devices. Google could take that convenience a step further with a potential feature that will let you drag an image from the notification center and share it with other apps.
At the moment, there are only a few actions available for an image that appears in the notification center, such as the ability to tap on it to open the file or remove it from the panel with a single swipe. In the future, you might be able to simply drag a file from its notification to drop it on any app you want to share the image with, as spotted by Chrome Story.
The potential "Notification Drag" capability was discovered through a code change request in Chromium Gerrit, where it is currently pending review. If the feature becomes public, it will make it a lot easier to share images directly from the notification panel without having to open that file from its original location.
If this sounds familiar, that's because iPhones have offered this feature for quite some time. On iOS, you can pin Siri's image search results to your notification center, making the photos readily accessible whenever you need them for a Docs project or presentation, for instance. After you've pinned the image, you can drag and drop it into an email or document.
It looks like Chrome OS will replicate this capability, assuming the code change request is approved and rolled out to consumers. For the time being, the feature is currently unavailable in any form, not even via a command flag.
Considering that this change is currently awaiting review, it might take a while before we see it in action. But it'll be a useful sharing feature for many of the best Chromebooks.