---
name: Grabber
slug: grabber
category: component
status: published
created: 2026-08-21T00:00:00.000Z
modified: 2026-08-21T00:00:00.000Z
definition: The short rounded bar drawn at the top of a bottom sheet to say the
  surface can be dragged.
aliases:
  - name: drag indicator
    source: material
  - name: pull tab
    source: community
  - name: sheet handle
    source: community
  - name: grabber bar
    source: hig
  - name: pill handle
    source: community
tags:
  - dragging
  - icons
  - touch
relations:
  contrastWith:
    - drag-handle
  variantOf: []
  partOf:
    - action-sheet
    - drawer
  seeAlso:
    - drag-and-drop
    - bottom-sheet
implementations:
  - system: material
    name: Drag handle
    url: https://m3.material.io/components/bottom-sheets/overview
sources:
  - title: Bottom sheets, Material Design 3
    url: https://m3.material.io/components/bottom-sheets/overview
demo: inline
exhibit: false
useWhen: the little bar on top of a sheet
---

A grabber is a promise about a gesture. Nothing on a touch screen announces that
a surface can be dragged, so the bar is drawn where a thumb would grip: a few
pixels of neutral colour, centred, at the edge the sheet moves along. Apple calls
it a grabber, Material calls it a drag handle, and everyone in a standup calls it
the little pill.

It is a control, not decoration. The bar itself is around four pixels tall, so
the region that responds to the drag has to be much larger, and the whole sheet
header usually is: the mark says where, the hit area says how much room you
actually have. Give it a role and a label, and let the keyboard move the sheet
between its detents with arrow keys, because a gesture-only affordance is a
gesture-only feature.

The grabber also tells you what kind of sheet you are looking at. A sheet with
detents (peek, half, full) earns one, and dragging is how you reach them. A sheet
with a single fixed height does not: the bar then advertises a gesture that does
nothing, and the reader learns to distrust it. On desktop the same mark appears
on resizable panes and split views, where it doubles as the divider, and there
the cursor does part of the work the bar does on touch.

Draw it low contrast and keep it out of the tab order's way, but never hide it
behind the content it sits above. If a sheet's first row scrolls under the
grabber, the surface reads as broken rather than as draggable.