Chrome on Windows 11 will soon let you drag and download multiple files from web apps to File Explorer

Google is working on a change in Chrome for Windows that could fix a long-standing drag-and-drop frustration.

Right now, dragging multiple files from websites such as Google Drive, Dropbox, or GitHub to your desktop often fails. In many cases, only one file downloads, even if several are selected. This forces users to repeat the same action again and again.

Drag and download multiple files at once in Chrome on Windows

A recent Chromium commit spotted by Windows Report confirms active work on proper multi-file drag-and-drop support on Windows. The change lets Chrome treat one drag action as a group of files instead of a single item. This allows web apps to tell the browser that several downloads belong to the same action.

For users, the idea is simple. Select several files on a web page. Drag them to a folder on your PC. All files save together, just like they do in desktop apps. This could help anyone who often downloads batches of email attachments, exported reports, or groups of files from cloud storage tools.

For instance, you might be cleaning up your inbox in Outlook on the web or Gmail and want to save several attachments from a single email thread. Today, you often have to click each file one by one. If you try to drag them together, only one file may end up on your desktop.

With this change in Chrome for Windows, the experience would feel more natural. You could select all the attachments, drag them to a folder in File Explorer, and see every file save at once. It would work the same way users already expect from desktop email apps.

Behind the scenes, this builds on Chrome’s existing drag-and-drop system for downloads, which has been limited to one file per drag. The new behavior allows websites to pass details for several files at once, so Chrome can start each download automatically after you drop them into File Explorer.

The work currently focuses on Windows. There is no confirmed version or release timeline yet. The feature will likely reach testing builds such as Canary first before rolling out more widely.

Chrome is also testing Windows 11 native notifications for default browser changes and a Mica-style title bar.