Every Drag and Drop Trick You Can Do in Google Chrome

Chrome has always been good at drag and drop, and over the years it has only gotten better. Most people know you can drag a link somewhere, but there are more tricks here than you might expect. Here’s the full list.

Open a Link in a New Tab

Drag any link from a page or your bookmarks bar and drop it onto the tab strip at the top of Chrome. The link opens in a new tab. If you drop it between two existing tabs, it opens in that exact position rather than at the end of the strip. Handy when you want to keep things in a specific order.

Search for Any Text in a New Tab

Highlight any text on a page, then drag and drop it onto the tab strip. Chrome treats it as a search query and opens a Google search for that text in a new tab. No copying, no pasting, no address bar. Just drag.

Open an Image in a New Tab

Drag any image from a web page and drop it onto the tab strip. Chrome opens the image file directly in a new tab at full size. Useful when you want to inspect an image without opening it in a new window or right-clicking through a menu.

Bookmark a Link Without Visiting It

Drag any link from a page and drop it onto your bookmarks bar. Chrome saves it as a bookmark immediately, without you having to visit the page first. You can also drag an image to the bookmarks bar to save a link to it.

Open a Local File in Chrome

Drag any file from your computer, such as an HTML file, a PDF, or an image, and drop it directly into a Chrome tab or onto the tab strip. Chrome opens the file in the browser. Useful for quickly previewing files without navigating through menus.

Reorder and Move Tabs Between Windows

Drag a tab left or right along the tab strip to reorder it. Drag a tab all the way off the strip to pull it out into its own window. Drag a tab from one Chrome window and drop it onto the tab strip of another to move it there.

Good to Know

• All of these tricks work on Windows, Mac, Linux, and Chromebook.
• Dragging to the tab strip works with links from any source: web pages, the bookmarks bar, or even links in Google Docs and other web apps open in Chrome.
• On a Chromebook touchpad, you can drag with a one-finger press and hold, then slide to the target before lifting.

Most people never move past right-click and middle-click. Once you get used to dragging, a lot of these feel faster, especially when you’re already reaching for something with the mouse.