About a year ago, Microsoft renamed the Your Phone Companion app to Phone Link. The built-in Phone Link app in Windows 10 and 11 is an excellent piece of software.
With the help of Phone Link, you can view and send text messages. Besides that, you can receive and make phone calls from your PC.
Currently, messages and call features are available for Android users only. However, even iPhone users will be able to view & send messages and receive and make calls in the coming months. In fact, these features are already available for users on Windows 11 Insider builds.
To avail these features, you must link your Android or iPhone to your PC using the Phone Link software. Once linked, you can use these text message and call features right from the Phone Link app.
The Phone Link software is regularly updated to add new features and fix issues. If, for some reason, you are unable to link your smartphone to your PC using Phone Link or having issues with the Phone Link app, you can reset it or reinstall it.
This guide shows you how to reset, uninstall and reinstall the Phone Link app in Windows 10 and 11.
Reset and repair the Phone Link app in Windows 10/11
NOTE: To know how to uninstall and reinstall, please scroll down the page to see directions.
Step 1: Open the Settings app. On Windows 10 PCs, go to Apps > Apps & features page. On Windows 11, navigate to Apps > Installed apps page.
Step 2: On Windows 10, click on the Phone Link app’s entry to see the Advanced options link. Click on the link. On Windows 11, click the three dots next to the Phone Link’s entry and then click Advanced options.
Step 3: Next, scroll down to the Reset section. Here, click on the Repair button to repair the Phone Link app. If the repair job does not fix the problem, click on the Reset button to reset it.
If resetting or repairing the Phone Link does not fix the issue, you can consider reinstalling it.
Uninstall or reinstall the Phone Link app in Windows 10/11
As you might have noticed by now, Windows 10/11 does not let you uninstall the Phone Link app via the Settings app. Hence, we need to use PowerShell to uninstall it.
Step 1: Open PowerShell as administrator. To do that, search for PowerShell, right-click on the PowerShell entry in the search results, and then click the Run as administrator option.
Click on the Yes button when you see the User Account Control prompt.
Step 2: At the PowerShell window, copy and paste the following command and then hit the Enter key to uninstall the Phone Link app.
Get-AppxPackage Microsoft.YourPhone -AllUsers | Remove-AppxPackage
You can stop here if you do not want to reinstall the Phone Link app. To reinstall, please follow the instructions in the next step.
Step 3: Once the Phone Link is removed, open the Microsoft Store app, search for the Phone Link app, and then click on the Get/Install button to install it. That’s it! You have successfully reinstalled the Phone Link app.
Jimbocous says
“The built-in Phone Link app in Windows 10 and 11 is an excellent piece of software.”
No, the built-in Phone Link app in Windows 10 is crapware:
1) Won’t enable internet access for the app until it has hijacked a browser window to load msn.com. Block MSN, app falsely reports no internet access. Pretty scummy, even for Microsoft!
2) Won’t hold a connection to the Droid for more than a couple hours, even when sitting next to each other and the wifi router on a rock-solid network.
3) If it does actually work, you can’t capture text from a notification screen to the clipboard, e.g. to copy/paste a code for two-factor authentication. Stupid.
4) Can’t delete messages. Have to go to the Droid to do so, so why bother with the app?
Uninstalling this waste of time.
Shannon says
In Windows 11, even as administrator the command is now disabled.
Rudy says
It works but if you do not run as administrator it will NOT WORK. I know this because when I tried the first time I did not run under administrator. Thanks for the instructions.