(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
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.
(Credit: Microsoft/PCMag)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.
(Credit: Microsoft/PCMag)If you don't have one of the more capable phone models, you won’t see the Apps section in the top menu.
(Credit: Microsoft/PCMag)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.
(Credit: Microsoft/PCMag)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.