Microsoft is enabling greater synergy between Windows PCs and smartphones, allowing users to reply to messages, receive and make calls, and check their phone notifications right from their PC. The Phone Link app on your PC, which syncs Android phones and iPhones with Windows, also lets users share files between devices. Now Windows makes it easy to share files from PC to Android.
Windows sharing feature
As part of the new Windows Insider Preview, Microsoft is introducing the ability to quickly share content on an Android phone from the sharing window on a Windows PC. With this feature, pressing to share a file will now bring up a quick share window that will display the user’s Android phone that is paired with the computer.
Paired Android phones are displayed in the sharing window
Photo credit: Microsoft
According to Microsoft, users must have their smartphone paired with their Windows PC using the Link to Windows app on Android and Phone Link on their PC for the feature to work. Only paired Android smartphones will appear in the sharing window, and there’s no indication yet if the feature will extend to iPhones.
Instantly right-clicking on a file in Windows and selecting Share opens a sharing window with options to quickly send the file to your email contacts or share it via Nearby Sharing or other apps.
The feature was announced as part of the updates rolling out to the Beta channel with Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 22635.3785. It may take some time for these features to become widely available to all Windows 11 users.
Windows 11 Preview Build
Other improvements being tested with the Preview Build include tweaks to the Windows Spotlight feature, along with other fixes for known issues. The update will make it easier for users to change images and include them in the Windows Spotlight experience on the desktop.
Windows allows users to share files between Android devices and computers via the cross-device copy and paste feature within the Phone Link app. The feature, however, is only available on the Surface Duo and select devices from Samsung, Honor, Oppo and Asus.
Last month, a Windows Central report claimed that the Phone Link app on Windows would soon get a new optical character recognition (OCR) feature that would allow users to copy text from images.
