- Windows 11 is getting a new Cross Device Resume feature
- It’s like Apple’s Handoff ability for using apps across a phone and PC
- In this case, it’ll hook up a Windows 11 PC and Android phone, with Microsoft showing off the feature at Build 2025
Here’s some good news for Windows 11 users who are jealous of the convenience of Apple’s Handoff feature that lets you seamlessly resume what you were last doing in apps when you switch between iOS and Mac devices.
Microsoft has this functionality inbound, allowing for a similar way of working across Windows 11 and Android smartphones, as evidenced by a session from Build 2025 that was uploaded to YouTube.
As Windows Central reports, the demonstration of ‘Cross Device Resume’ in Windows 11 has been removed from the YouTube clip, with Microsoft editing the video to strip it out.
Luckily, well-known leaker on X, PhantomOfEarth, managed to grab a screenshot of the deleted demo which you can see below.
Taskbar hover card UI used for the upcoming taskbar recommendations feature + Resume on taskbar, w/ Spotify support, in Windows 11 (taken from a pre-recorded Build session*) pic.twitter.com/C8eUTyjTanMay 20, 2025
It showed how Cross Device Resume works with Spotify, kicking off with a song playing on an Android smartphone, and then moving to a Windows 11 PC.
After having switched over to the Windows 11 desktop, the Spotify app is flagged with a phone icon in the taskbar, and when hovered over, it offers a Resume option to continue playing the track that the user was listening to on their Android device.
It’ll resume from the exact spot where you left off on your mobile, as you might expect.
Analysis: Project Resume
So, Microsoft is apparently working on giving software developers the ability to include this Cross Device Resume functionality with their apps (for those who make both Android and Windows versions of their products, of course). From the info gleaned here, it looks like Spotify will use this feature, and apparently WhatsApp might, too.
That is assuming this Handoff doppelganger ever makes the cut for Windows 11. Clearly, it’s not quite ready to be publicly aired yet, given Microsoft yanked down the part of the video which showed the way Cross Device Resume works. However, it seems like a sensible idea to bring this functionality to Microsoft’s desktop OS – indeed, you might wonder why this hasn’t been done before.
That’s a good question, especially considering that it’s a very useful feature, and one that Apple has provided to Mac users for a decade now, so Microsoft looks very behind the times. Although as Windows Central pointed out, cross-device continuity is something Microsoft has been toying with for a long time, ever since Project Rome first came to light in 2016 – although that was a much grander vision of working across different devices.
One obvious element that needs improving is the name. I’m hoping Cross Device Resume is a placeholder for now, as it’s lacking a good deal in snappiness when compared to Handoff. Although it may just be shortened to Resume if the screenshot of the feature in action provided on X is anything to go by.
Interestingly, some keen-eyed Windows 11 watchers have previously flagged up a Cross Device Resume process running in the background of the operating system. This is seemingly a way of working on OneDrive files across devices, so it looks like Microsoft’s plan is to expand this groundwork to cover a range of apps, not just its cloud storage service.
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