phone link

Microsoft’s Phone Link has quietly moved closer to making Android apps feel like first-class citizens on a Windows 11 desktop: the new Expanded screen option is now rolling out broadly, letting compatible Android apps expand beyond the cramped portrait window and use nearly the whole monitor —...

Microsoft’s latest Windows 11 updates tighten the bond between desktop and mobile: Android phones no longer behave like distant companions but increasingly act as remote controls, file lockers, and even streaming hosts for PC workflows. The rollout — anchored in a refreshed Link to Windows...

Microsoft has quietly moved the way Windows 11 exposes photos from Android phones: the Phone Link app’s once‑handy, gallery‑style “Photos” view is being redirected into File Explorer, and Microsoft now recommends using File Explorer as the primary place to view, manage and transfer mobile photos...

Microsoft’s Link to Windows (Phone Link) has just moved from a handy companion to a real cross-device control center: Android phones can now remotely lock a Windows 11 PC, send and receive files both ways, share rich clipboard content (text and images), start one‑tap screen mirroring, and even...

Microsoft’s Phone Link and the Android companion Link to Windows have moved from convenience add‑ons to an actionable cross‑device control surface: a new update adds a one‑tap Lock PC toggle, a Recent Activity dashboard, wireless Android→Windows file sharing that behaves like AirDrop...

Microsoft has quietly given the Link to Windows (Phone Link) experience a meaningful upgrade: Android users can now lock a paired Windows 11 PC remotely from their phone, and a redesigned Link to Windows interface centralizes clipboard sharing, one‑tap screen mirroring, bi‑directional file...

Pushbullet showed a simple, elegant answer to a very common modern annoyance: why keep picking up your phone when your PC can do the job? For years it acted as the lightweight “glue” between Android and Windows — mirroring notifications, pushing links, sharing files, and letting you send SMS...

Microsoft’s Phone Link is testing a practical — if imperfect — way to make Android apps feel less like tiny islands on a Windows 11 desktop: an Expanded view option that stretches streamed apps beyond the cramped, phone-sized window they’ve been trapped in for years. The feature appears in the...

Microsoft’s latest tweak to Phone Link — a quietly rolling “Expanded Mode” for streamed Android apps — is a small change with outsized implications: it makes mobile apps feel less like phone-shaped islands on a desktop and more like first-class Windows windows, but it also exposes the...

Microsoft's Phone Link is finally addressing one of the most persistent irritations when running Android apps on a Windows 11 desktop: apps that stubbornly appear as narrow, phone‑sized islands on a wide monitor. A new expanded view toggle — currently rolling out to Insiders and being trialled...

Microsoft’s Phone Link is quietly getting a usability upgrade that finally makes streamed Android apps behave more like native Windows windows — but the feature is early, uneven, and still hamstrung by phone-first app design and device gating. Background Phone Link (formerly Your Phone) has been...

Microsoft’s latest Windows 11 Insider build finally gives Android-tethered users a genuinely useful handoff: you can now resume certain activities from supported Android phones directly on a Windows PC with a single click — not by streaming your phone screen, but by handing the activity’s...

Microsoft’s latest Insider preview, delivered as Windows 11 Build 26220.7271 (KB5070307), expands the OS’s cross-device resume capabilities — allowing more Android phones and apps to hand off activities to a PC — while also introducing point-in-time restore, Fluid Dictation in Voice Typing...

Microsoft’s latest scoped Windows 11 update bundles a handful of tidy, productivity‑first tweaks — most notably a reworked chat surface that is now the free Microsoft Teams experience, tighter phone messaging via Phone Link inside Teams, and a Start menu change that labels built‑in apps as...

Microsoft’s Windows 11 Start menu has been rebuilt from the ground up in the November 2025 update, and the change is more than cosmetic: the new Start is a single, vertically scrollable launcher that surfaces the full All‑apps inventory on the main page, offers three distinct browsing modes...

If you want the easiest, free way to send and receive Android texts from your Windows PC, Microsoft’s Phone Link (with the companion Link to Windows app on Android) is the best place to start — it lets you read and reply to SMS/MMS, handle calls, view recent photos, get phone notifications, and...

Outlook and Microsoft now make it possible to sign in using QR codes — whether you want to add your Outlook account to the mobile app quickly, enable passwordless sign‑ins with Microsoft Authenticator, or pair companion devices with Windows — and understanding the different QR workflows, their...

Microsoft is quietly redirecting Phone Link’s built‑in photo gallery into File Explorer, replacing the app’s visual, recency‑sorted Photos tab with a banner that sends you to your phone’s storage inside File Explorer and urging users to “enjoy a better Photos experience” there. Background Phone...

Microsoft has quietly started redirecting the Phone Link app’s built‑in photo gallery to File Explorer, effectively removing the “Photos” viewing experience from Phone Link and asking Windows 11 users to manage mobile images through File Explorer instead. This change is already visible as an...

Microsoft has quietly begun removing the Phone Link app’s built‑in Photos viewer and redirecting users to File Explorer, telling Windows 11 owners to browse and manage mobile photos from a mounted mobile device entry instead of the app’s curated gallery view. Background / Overview Phone Link...