If you frequently reach for your phone to tackle messages and notifications while at your desk, Microsoft has some good news for you: it’s launching a new app that lets you access your phone’s contents from your Windows 10 desktop.
It’s called ‘Your Phone,’ and the app will initially let you view notifications, read and reply to SMS messages, and drag and drop photos to move them between your devices. If you’ve used a recently made Dell machine, like the 2018 XPS 13 we reviewed in March, you’ll find the functionality to be rather similar to the company’s Mobile Connect software.
The aforementioned features will work on Android; iOS folks will have to settle for shared browsing data when they use Microsoft Edge on their phone and desktop.
Microsoft has already made Your Phone available to members of the Windows Insider Program so they can test it; you can expect to see it in the Microsoft Store by the time the next Windows 10 update arrives.
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While there are already a bunch of third-party apps available to do what Your Phone does, an official app from Microsoft will mean tighter integration with Windows, and hopefully, more control over how and when your notifications appear on your screen.
However, since it presently only handles SMS messages, I’m not overly excited; I’m happy to hold off on in until it can handle multiple messaging apps like WhatsApp, Signal, and Telegram. Oh, and while you’re at it, Microsoft, how about baking in some smart replies, a la Google?
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