Drag&Drop : changes of mouse info tip on modifier press

Hello, when doing drap&drop operation in File Explorer, an info tip will occur at the mouse pointer e.g. when you drag a file from c: to an external drive on the folder tree on the left, indicating that it will be copied.

Modifier keys (ctrl/alt/shift) allow the modification of a drag and drop operation, e.g. causing it to move instead of copy, or created a shortcut.

Hitting the modifier will immediately be indicated in the popup that occurs next to the cursor.

On my Win 11 arm64 installation in Parallels, this does not work: the info tip does not change, or only changes for a split second.

Could someone please confirm that on x64 installations of Windows 11 (release channel, not developer channel), this DOES work? If you happen to have an ARM installation that is not a VM, please also indicate, or if you do have some VM where it does work.

Thank you a lot!!

I'm not sure exactly what you are asking, but in my case, I changed drag and drop default to MOVE instead of COPY by using this tutorial

Hello, thank you a lot for helping!

My question is exclusively about the popup that shows next to the cursor. For example, when you drag (but not yet release), a popup next to the moving cursor will be telling you what action is about to happen when you release (for example: COPY).

When you press modifiers (alt / ctrl / shift), the action that will be performed can be changed.

This means, when you are still dragging (not yet releasing), and you press the modifier (e.g. shift key), the popup text will change, for example from "copy" to "move" or vice versa, indicating that the modifier key is actually going to change the action that will be carried out when you release.

In my case however, what happens is the modifier WILL correctly change the actual action that will de facto happen, but the text displayed next to the cursor will NOT change when I press a modifier - indicating an incorrect action. This means it will for example CONTINUE to show "copy" even though I am pressing a modifier that is going to cause "MOVE" once I comple the drag and drop action by releasing the mouse button whilst still pressing the modifier key. (the modifier key is the shift key in this particular case, to my knowledge).

Thanks, That explanation I understand.
You are correct about the modifiers for the default drag option.
Press and hold the following keys to change what File Explorer does.

• Hold the Ctrl key while you are dragging a file or a folder to copy it.
• Hold the Shift key while you are dragging a file or a folder to move it.
• Hold the Alt key or the Ctrl + Shift keys together while you are dragging a file or a folder to create a shortcut.

Since I have changed my default action already as well as my right click context menu, I am unable to test this out for you. Hopefully someone else will step in to this thread and use the above info to test on their machines.

glasskuter said:

Thanks, That explanation I understand.
You are correct about the modifiers for the default drag option.
Press and hold the following keys to change what File Explorer does.

• Hold the Ctrl key while you are dragging a file or a folder to copy it.
• Hold the Shift key while you are dragging a file or a folder to move it.
• Hold the Alt key or the Ctrl + Shift keys together while you are dragging a file or a folder to create a shortcut.

Since I have changed my default action already as well as my right click context menu, I am unable to test this out for you. Hopefully someone else will step in to this thread and use the above info to test on their machines.

Click to expand...

What they are saying is that when pressing the key, the option doesn't show the change.

Winuser said:

What they are saying is that when pressing the key, the option doesn't show the change.

Click to expand...

Yes, I know. I put the info of the modifiers in my post so that someone who has not changed the default drag and drop action can test it on their machines and provide him feedback.

eulenfalter said:

Could someone please confirm that on x64 installations of Windows 11 (release channel, not developer channel), this DOES work?

Click to expand...

On my x64 install of release channel 22000.527, pressing Ctrl while using left click drag-&-drop for a file on C: to another folder on C: changes the popup from 'Move to...' to 'Copy to...'. The default is only 'move' if I am dragging to a folder on the same partition. If I drag to a different partition then the action is 'copy' and does not change with a modifier key.

glasskuter said:

Yes, I know. I put the info of the modifiers in my post so that someone who has not changed the default drag and drop action can test it on their machines and provide him feedback.

Click to expand...

It works on my computers.

Thank you all. This was very helpful for troubleshooting. If I find the culprit, I will post, I promise.

My understanding, Parallels is still 'beta' testing Windows 11 support, so you may just have to wait for a newer version to address this as it may not be passing the keys properly.

The solution is that in Parallels, one needs to check the option "optimize keyboard for games" (!). However they claim that might come with other issues (key combinations), so I will have to research the downsides. It IS a paralells issue, not a Win 11 or ARM issue. Thank you for your help.