Last month Microsoft introduced a new app called Your Phone that would let you use a Windows 10 PC to access photos from your phone and send web pages from your phone to your desktop web browser.
Now it’s available.
The Your Phone app is now available from the Microsoft Store. But you’ll need to be running Windows 10 Built 17723 or newer to take advantage of all of its features.
For now that means you need to be a member of the Windows Insider Preview program. You can install the app on earlier versions of Windows 10, but you won’t get the photo features, just the ability to send web pages from your phone to your PC.
I was able to install the app on a computer running the Windows 10 April 2018 update, and it prompted me to install the Microsoft Apps app on my Android phone and login with my Microsoft account. Once that was done, I was able to open a web page using the Chrome browser on my phone, tap the share link, and use the “Continue on PC” option to send it to my laptop.
But that’s all the app does for me right now. Once Redstone 5 rolls out this fall, the app should let me access photos from my phone on my PC. But since I back up my photos to Google Photos, I can already sort of do that in a web browser.
Meanwhile, Microsoft says iPhone users don’t get the photo features at all. The company says the Your Phone app will only let iPhone users send web pages to a PC.
As a first step toward providing a more integrated experience between Windows PC users and Android or iOS smartphone users, it’s… something that feels like a first step. But that’s usually a prerequisite for a second step, so maybe the app will add more features over time.
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