21.13 Drag and Drop

In most graphical desktop environments, Emacs has basic support for drag and drop operations. For instance, dropping text onto an Emacs frame inserts the text where it is dropped. Dropping a file onto an Emacs frame visits that file. As a special case, dropping the file on a Dired buffer moves or copies the file (according to the conventions of the application it came from) into the directory displayed in that buffer.

Dropping a file normally visits it in the window you drop it on. If you prefer to visit the file in a new window in such cases, customize the variable dnd-open-file-other-window.

The XDND and Motif drag and drop protocols, and the old KDE 1.x protocol, are currently supported.