Samsung Files Patent for Dragging One Recent App Onto Another to Split Your Screen
Samsung's patent application turns your recent apps screen into a drop zone. Drag one app card onto another, and where you let go decides how the two share your screen.
What Samsung's drag-to-split gesture actually does
A phone has a chat, a map and a recipe all open in the background. The owner wants two of them side by side, and has to dig through menus to make that happen.
Samsung's patent application tries to shrink that job to a single gesture. In the recent apps view, you press and hold one app card and drag it over another. A preview shows how the two would share the screen. Hover over the bottom of the other card and yours slots in underneath. Hover over the top and it flips. Hover over the middle and your app floats on top as a small pop-up window.
When you let go, the preview becomes the real thing. If you change your mind, you can drag the card to a home or cancel spot and nothing changes.
display a user interface of a recent screen view, enabling browsing a plurality of recently used screens, on the display by executing the recent screen view, based on a first input, each of the plurality of recently used screens indicating an execution screen of an application previously executed or currently being executed in the electronic device; …
Translation: Users open an app switcher screen to browse through their active and past applications.
How the drop spot picks your split-screen layout
The filing starts from the recent screen view, the row of app cards you see after swiping the display or tapping a button. Pressing and holding one card puts the device into a multi-window preview mode. The other cards tilt back in perspective, and the card you are holding shrinks so you can drag it.
As you drag over a target card, a preview of the split layout appears. Where you hover matters:
- Bottom stretch (roughly the lowest 30%): your card goes in the lower half, the target on top.
- Top stretch (roughly the highest 30%): the order flips.
- Middle band: the target fills the screen and yours floats as a pop-up, which can sit in one of nine grid positions.
- Left or right edge: the pairing is released and your card is matched with the previous or next card.
Letting go turns the preview into real windows, with a draggable bar between them to change the size ratio. Dropping the card on a home card, home button or cancel button ends the mode.
The dependent claims add extras. The device can recommend apps to pair, judged by your learned multi-window history, how related two apps are, their categories and usage time. Touching a card with more than one finger can open a split with your most recent app, and a layout can be built automatically when your history shows a pattern.
… while the second input is maintained in the multi-window preview mode, when the first recently used screen is moved to a specific position for a target recently used screen, according to the second input, displaying, as a preview image, a layout of a multi-window in which the first recently used screen and the target recently used screen can be displayed together; …
Translation: Dragging one app over another while holding down generates a live preview of a split screen layout.
Why recents-screen splitting matters on big screens
If you already juggle apps on a big phone or tablet, this puts split-screen setup inside the screen you use to switch apps anyway. You would build a pair by dragging, see the result before it happens, and fix a mistake just by moving your finger.
The filing's background is simple: displays keep growing, so showing several apps at once is becoming normal. The recommended-app and automatic-layout claims point toward a device that learns your usual pairings. It is a patent application, so nothing in it says this will ship.
Samsung's 1481st filing we've tracked since May in our Samsung coverage follows keeping AI chatbots fast under load and a behavior-reading ad blocker.
Splitting a phone or tablet screen is something plenty of people want and few bother with, because setting it up can feel fiddly. The cost of that problem is small each time, but you hit it every day you multitask. A single drag with a visible preview is a sensible size of fix for it.
The preview is the best part. Seeing the layout before you let go means fewer accidental splits and fewer do-overs. The recommended-app and auto-layout pieces could feel pushy if they guess wrong, so their value depends on how well they learn your habits.
The filing covers a screen gesture, so expect a tidy interface refinement. You will notice it only if it ships and you already use split screen.
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49 drawing sheets from US 2026/0319816 A1 · click any drawing to enlarge
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