---
name: Spring loading
slug: spring-loading
category: interaction
status: published
created: 2026-08-21T00:00:00.000Z
modified: 2026-08-22T00:00:00.000Z
definition: Hovering a dragged item over a container until it opens, so a drag
  can travel through nested destinations without being dropped and restarted.
aliases:
  - name: spring-loaded folders
    source: hig
  - name: hover to open during drag
    source: community
  - name: drag hover expand
    source: community
tags:
  - dragging
  - menus
relations:
  contrastWith:
    - drag-autoscroll
  variantOf: []
  partOf: []
  seeAlso:
    - submenu
    - quasimode
implementations: []
sources:
  - title: "MacPaw: What is spring loading on Mac"
    url: https://macpaw.com/how-to/use-spring-loading-on-mac
demo: inline
exhibit: false
useWhen: a drag opens what it hovers so it can go deeper
---

The Finder has done this since the early nineties and still does: pick a file up, hold it
over a folder without letting go, and after a moment the folder opens under the pointer.
Hold it over a folder in there and that one opens too, so a drag can descend three levels
and land where it was actually going. When you release, the windows the drag sprang open
close themselves again, because they were opened by the gesture rather than by you. macOS
even lets a person skip the wait by tapping the trackpad while holding, and exposes the
delay as a slider in system settings, which tells you how contested the right number is.

Everything about the pattern is really a fix for one problem: a drag is a modal gesture
with no room in it for navigation. Once the mouse button is down you cannot click a
disclosure triangle, scroll with a second hand, or open a tab, so any destination that is
not already on screen is unreachable without dropping the item somewhere temporary and
picking it up again. Spring loading turns dwell time, the one thing a drag can still
express, into a navigation command. That is why the same behaviour appears far beyond
folders: dragging over a collapsed node in a tree expands it, over a browser tab switches
to it, over a collapsed accordion section opens it, and over the edge of a scrolling list
scrolls it.

The dwell has to be paid for while it runs, exactly as a long press does, or the delay is
indistinguishable from nothing happening. A filling ring, a growing highlight, or the
folder icon flicking open all work; what does not work is silence followed by a sudden
change of context under a pointer that is holding something. The delay itself is a
compromise between two failures. Too short and every folder the drag crosses on its way
somewhere else flies open, which is disorienting and slow. Too long and nobody discovers
the behaviour at all. Whatever the number, leaving the target before it elapses has to
cancel cleanly and reset the countdown, since crossing a folder is far more common than
aiming at one.

A phone home screen is the same mechanic with the stakes raised. Drag an app onto a folder,
hold, and the folder opens over the whole screen so the app can be dropped inside; let go and
it closes again. Because the opened folder covers everything, the cost of opening is
impossible to miss: one that sprang the moment a drag touched it would bury the grid on every
pass across it, and there would be nowhere left to drag to. On a touchscreen the pick-up is often a long press of
its own, which puts two waits back to back: one to get something in hand, one to open what it
is being held over. They are different gestures doing different work.

Long press is the neighbouring gesture and the contrast worth holding onto: a long press
is a press held in place with nothing in hand, and it usually reveals actions for the thing
underneath. Spring loading is a hold that happens inside an existing drag, and it changes
where the drag can go rather than what it can do. Both are invisible, both are timing based,
and both therefore need an alternative for people who cannot hold a pointer steady for half
a second. For a drag that has to traverse, the honest alternative is not a better dwell: it
is cut and paste, a move-to command, or a destination picker, which is also the only route
a keyboard has.