Super Drag & Drop is a new experimental feature of the Microsoft Edge browser. The main idea behind the feature is to improve the opening of links and running web searches in Edge.
Once enabled in Edge, it allows you to drag and drop links just a short distance to open them in the browser. Similarly, dragging & dropping text runs a search for the text.
How to enable Super Drag & Drop in Microsoft Edge
Here is how you enable the feature in Microsoft Edge. Note that the feature is integrate in Microsoft Edge 122 or newer. You may check the version by selecting Menu > Help & Feedback > About Microsoft Edge.
- Load edge://flags/#edge-super-drag-drop in the address bar of the web browser.
- Set the status of the experimental feature to Enabled.
- Restart Microsoft Edge.
There is one additional step required to enable the feature in Microsoft Edge:
- Load edge://settings/appearance in the Edge browser’s address bar.
- Scroll down on the page that opens until you come to the Super Drag and Drop section.
- Toggle “Enable Super Drag and Drop” on the page to turn the feature on.
Super Drag & Drop is now enabled in the browser and you may start using it. Note that there is a “Configure Super Drag and Drop” option on the settings page to configure it.
The only two options provided at the moment let you select the open mode and the website block list. Links and searches open in a background tab by default. You can change that to foreground tab in the options.
The block list prevents Super Drag and Drop from functioning on websites that you add to the list.
Using the feature in Edge
Usage of the drag and drop feature is simple. Whenever you encounter a link in Microsoft Edge, you may drag and drop it just a short distance to load it in a new tab in the browser. It is handy especially for users who do not use middle-clicks or Shift-clicks to open links in new tabs.
Current versions of Edge support dropping links onto the browser’s tab bar to open them. This feature reduces the distance the mouse has to travel to open links.
There is no option to launch multiple links that way. This ability reminds me of Snap Links, a browser extension for Firefox and other browsers. It allowed you to draw rectangles around links to open them all at once in the browser.
Anyway, Edge’s feature is limited to dragging and dropping a single link to launch it. If you want to open multiple links, you need to repeat this for each of the links individually.
The second option that the feature introduces is to run searches for text that you drag and drop. Highlight text in the browser and then use drag & drop to run a search for that text.
This feature uses the default search engine of the browser. It is refreshing that Microsoft did not hardcode it to use Bing. Clearly, this should be the norm, but in this day and age, it is often not. A program like MSEdgeRedirect helps with that under Windows.
Closing Words
Super Drag & Drop is an experimental feature that is entirely optional at this point. It may speed up the opening of links and searching for selected text in the browser. Users who use keyboard shortcuts or middle-clicks won’t benefit from it as much as users who do not.
Now You: how do you open links in your browser of choice?