Sure, save it as a draft. You don't need no fancy stinkin' email syncin' Handoff for that.

Why stop there? We don't need no stinkin' emails at all because back in my day, we used to send letters through the post!

Even if you save it as a draft, you'd still need a way to sync it between your devices. Handoff makes it simple and convenient.

Gmail automatically saves emails drafts. Thunderbird might as well, though I'm not sure.

I also have this same experience with Slack.

I often switch between mobile and Linux desktop for these applications, no special software required.

IMAP does just that; save it as a draft (most clients automatically do that anyway) and pick it up wherever.

IMAP is a kludge compared with Handoff.

Now when Linux can do the same thing with a word processing document, with an IM client, with a spreadsheet, with a presentation program, and with my web browser, get back to me.

Does this require using apple specific software though? I doubt it would work if I have an app/program installed on o ly one of the devices.

Handoff can work with third party applications though mostly it’s Apple stuff. One notable exception is you can hand off webpages from your phone to macOS and it’ll be handled by any browser.

Any cloud syncing service will sync files the second you save them. IM clients sync by their nature. Web browsers have had sync capabilities for years.

I've lived in the Apple ecosystem for a few years and Handoff/Continuity can do some impressive things (like the webcam thing of late, or cross device phone calls) that I ended up not using in practice. That's just me though. I prefer the simple way.

When Handoff or associated features don't work when they should, good luck troubleshooting.

> I can start writing an e-mail on my phone, put down my phone and then continue working on it on my tablet, and then putdown my tablet and immediately finish it up on my desktop in Linux?

I was doing that in the 1990s (thanks to IMAP and auto-saving drafts) without any vendor lock-in.

The thing is, it is OS-wide and does not work only for emails. It is not difficult to add to an application and all first party apps that have an equivalent on Apple Watch, iPhone/iPad and Mac work very well. A typical use case is looking at a web page on the phone, putting it on the big screen for whatever reason (for me it’s often to show a video). Or transition seamlessly from whatever I was doing on my phone whilst commuting to the desktop. Or the other way around. Or, having received a message on the watch, if a long reply is needed, the shortcut is there when I get my phone to go directly to the right message. Having that shortcut in a predictable and permanent place means that it’s trivial to do, regardless of the app in use.

It is not huge, but it is the opposite of the thousands paper cuts. It’s a reliable features that provides thousands tiny time savings and some small convenience. It was not uncommon for me to send myself emails with URLs of things to have a look at when at home before this sort of things made switching devices much more convenient (Air Drop also helps immensely).