It was late afternoon, and I was dragging a single scanned image from Finder into the integrated terminal. Instead of a path appearing at the cursor, the words "Upload to Agent" spread across the whole window.
When I let go, the file landed in the agent chat rather than the terminal. Different drop target, different folder, same result every time.
For the first half hour I assumed my aim had gotten sloppy. I nudged the drop point a few pixels at a time and failed over and over. The cause was not my hand — the entire window had become a single drop zone.
The whole window is one drop zone
According to a report filed on the Google AI Developers Forum on February 26, 2026, this behaviour started in v1.18.3. The moment a file crosses the window frame, a full-screen overlay appears and swallows every drop event behind it.
The awkward part is that nothing looks broken. The file arrives somewhere, and no error is shown. It simply arrives somewhere you did not intend.
Here is what that looks like in practice.
| What you try | What you expect | What actually happens |
|---|---|---|
| Drop an image on the integrated terminal | The absolute path is inserted | The image is attached to the agent chat |
| Move a file into a sidebar folder | The file moves into that folder | Nothing moves, and the agent receives it |
| Reorganise project assets | The directory layout changes | The layout stays exactly as it was |
An official reply arrived on March 1: the issue had been escalated internally, and users were asked to file reports through the in-app feedback icon in the top-right corner. Follow-up posts saying "still not fixed" continued through May, June, July and August, and the most recent one is dated September 11.
Two workarounds worth trying first
Forum participants found two remedies on their own. Neither is a documented procedure, so please read them expecting that they may stop working.
The first is to open Customization from the three-dot menu on the agent box. Once that panel has been opened, dragging into the explorer starts working again. The tip was posted on July 26, 2026, and several people confirmed it through August and September — one of them noted that dragging kept working even after closing the agent view.
The second is a window reload from the command palette. Press Cmd + Shift + P on macOS, or Ctrl + Shift + P on Windows and Linux, and run Developer: Reload Window. When the overlay is stuck on screen and the interface stops responding, this one takes effect faster.
In my own order of operations I open Customization first and watch for a moment, and only reload if that does nothing. That sequence has cost me the least rework.
Three ways to hand over a path without dragging
Finding the workarounds was a relief, but after a few days of use my thinking changed. If the next update breaks the workaround instead, I will simply repeat the same afternoon.
Dragging is a shortcut, not a route. I decided to keep a separate way of handing over a path, so that a blocked shortcut never stops the work.
The first is an operating system feature. In Finder on macOS, select a file and press Cmd + Option + C to put its absolute path on the clipboard as text. In Windows Explorer, hold Shift, right-click, and choose "Copy as path." Pasting into the terminal gives you exactly what the drag used to give you.
The second lives inside the editor. Right-clicking a file in the explorer offers Copy Path and Copy Relative Path. If you reach for it often, it is worth binding to a key that suits your hands. Open Preferences: Open Keyboard Shortcuts (JSON) from the command palette and add a single entry.
// keybindings.json — copy the relative path only while the explorer has focus
[
{
"key": "cmd+alt+shift+c",
"command": "copyRelativeFilePath",
"when": "explorerViewletVisible && filesExplorerFocus"
}
]The when clause is there so the same chord does not fire while you are typing in the editor itself. On Windows and Linux, read "key" as ctrl+alt+shift+c.
The third is a small shell function. As an indie developer I pull paths out of asset folders constantly, so I keep a function in .zshrc that resolves a relative path to an absolute one and sends it to the clipboard.
# ~/.zshrc — pull the path to you instead of dragging the file
# usage: agpath ./assets/hero.png
agpath() {
local target="${1:-.}" dir base abs
dir="$(cd "$(dirname -- "$target")" 2>/dev/null && pwd)" || {
printf 'directory not found: %s\n' "$target" >&2
return 1
}
base="$(basename -- "$target")"
abs="${dir%/}/${base}"
[ -e "$abs" ] || { printf 'not found: %s\n' "$abs" >&2; return 1; }
printf '%s' "$abs" | pbcopy # on Linux, swap pbcopy for xclip -selection clipboard
printf '%s\n' "$abs"
}The expected output looks like this, and the same string is now sitting on the clipboard.
$ agpath ./assets/ukiyoe/hokusai-0421.png
/Users/you/projects/wallpapers/assets/ukiyoe/hokusai-0421.pngThe -- passed to dirname and basename keeps filenames that begin with a hyphen from being read as options. Returning on a failed cd matters for the same reason: quietly copying a path that does not exist makes the eventual debugging much harder.
Paths containing spaces stay a hazard even after this. I once lost half a day to an agent command that reported "0 results, success," and I wrote that one up in One Space in a Path, and Nine Commands Reported Success While Counting the Wrong Place.
Living with a bug that has gone six months unfixed
The first report was in February, and the same symptom is still around in September. That span is a signal that waiting alone is not a plan.
Three things have become habit for me. Note the version number where the workaround worked. File the report through in-app feedback at least once. Leave a single line about the procedure in the repository's docs/.
That third one pays off even for solo work. I do not remember the remedy I found six months ago. One line — "opening Customization restores dragging, confirmed on 2.13.0" — saves me from paying that thirty minutes a second time.
A frozen interface can also come from causes other than this overlay. When a reload does not bring it back, the triage in Fixing Antigravity Slow Performance and Freezes may be the closer match.
One thing to check today
Open your copy of Antigravity, open Customization once from the three-dot menu on the agent box, and drag a single text file into a folder in the explorer. If it lands where you aimed, write down the version number somewhere — on the day it stops landing, that line is where you start.
If you would rather rethink how files reach the terminal in the first place, Building a Verification Loop With Antigravity 2.10.0's Embedded Terminal pairs well with this.
The primary source is the Google AI Developers Forum thread Global Upload to Agent dropzone overlay prevents drag-and-drop file management in terminal and file explorer. I have described only what I could reproduce on my own machine, so if your behaviour differs, adding your conditions to that thread will help whoever arrives next.