(Credit: René Ramos; Microsoft)
You take a picture on your phone, and now you want to see it on a bigger screen. You get a text message, but you don't want to dig out your phone to reply to it while you're working on your PC. Windows 11 lets you see that photo on that bigger screen and reply to the message right from your keyboard. All you have to do is connect your Android device to Windows 11 wirelessly. Most impressive of all, with some Android phone models you can simultaneously use multiple mobile apps right on your computer.
Step-by-Step: How to Connect Your Android and Your PC
Step 1: Open the Phone Link App in Windows 11
The Phone Link app is preinstalled on Windows 11. Sign in to your Microsoft account if you aren't already, and then choose Android.
Step 2: Install the Link to Windows Mobile App
Find and install the app called Link to Windows on your Android device. You get it either by searching in Google Play or entering www.aka.ms/yourpc in your mobile browser. Alternatively, on recent high-end Android phones, simply pull down the Quick settings shade and choose Link to Windows. Long-press it to get to the syncing settings. The Android app must be signed in to the same Microsoft account as the PC.
Step 3: Pair Your Phone and PC
You have a choice to pair using a QR code or by entering a text code from the PC’s Phone Link app into the phone’s companion app. Note that you need to scan the QR code in the Link to Windows app on the phone—be sure to use the in-app camera.
Step 4: See the Welcome Page; Start Using Your Android on Windows
After connecting your Android phone to your PC, you see a Welcome page indicating the connection was successful. You then get a quick visual tutorial of what you can do with the app now that your phone is connected. Note that you can install the app on multiple PCs for the same phone, so if you move between a desktop PC and home laptop, your tethered Android phone works on both. And you can connect multiple phones to one PC as well.
Step 5: Optional: Adjust Settings
Optionally, you can adjust some settings because you get a lot of choices for how you want Phone Link to work, particularly in how it displays notifications and from which apps. Additionally, you can choose to have Phone Link start when you start your PC and turn on and off features.
What Can You Do With a Connected Android Phone?
Connecting to any Android phone to a PC lets you see and reply to text messages, see and manage notifications, make and answer calls, and get photos instantly on the computer. A few spiffier functions only work on specific recent high-end phone models. In any case, the phone has to be in range of the PC with Bluetooth and Wi-Fi for all this to work, because although display and control occur on the PC, the apps are still running on the phone.
The main options (Messages, Calls, Apps, Photos) appear across the top. Recent apps and a View All Apps link when you click on the system tray icon. Notifications are tucked into a left-side panel.
The taskbar entry for Phone Link shows a badge with the number of notifications you have. You can choose which apps to receive notifications from and whether to respond on the PC or on the phone. And not everything happens in the app. You can respond to messages directly in the Windows Notification toast at the lower-right corner of the screen.
If you don't have one of the more capable phone models, you won’t see the Apps section in the top menu.
The most useful features are the ones that work with any Android device, and that's accessing text messaging and photos from your phone on your PC. Even with the less advanced models, you see photos on your PC right after you snap them with your phone and can drag them into a document or other app that works with photos, such as Photoshop.
A useful tool in Phone Link's toolkit is Instant Hotspot. It lets you use your Android phone's internet connection on your PC, which is great when you're out and about with no Wi-Fi. You can set up a hotspot from your phone directly, but it's more convenient to connect using only the computer.
The ability to use mobile apps (on selected phone models) on your PC can be useful and just plain cool. You can even drag and drop files between the phone and computer if the app and phone allow it. Navigating apps can be slightly tricky, though, as you can’t use the mouse wheel to move up and down a screen. Instead, you have to click and drag. But if you have a PC with a touch screen or trackpad, it’s pretty darn close to the real McCoy. A nifty attribute is that apps you run via Phone Link get their own Taskbar icons as though they were standard PC apps. That way you can minimize, resize, and close the apps just as if they were desktop apps.
What If You Have an iPhone?
You can also connect an iPhone to a Windows 11 computer with Phone Link, but you won't get the same depth of experience that Android users do. Microsoft has stated it wants to bring the same functionality for iPhones to Windows, but Apple has long been uninterested in releasing users from lock-in with its products. That said, you can connect an iPhone to a Windows PC and get notifications, text messages, and phone calls on the computer.
Windows 11: The Review
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