Microsoft Working on Photos Companion App for Android and iOS
- Mehedi Hassan
- Nov 29, 2017
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Windows 10’s Microsoft Photos app is set to get a major upgrade soon. As Microsoft promised back at Build, the company will be releasing a companion app for Microsoft Photos in the future. And that app is almost here.
In an internal version of the Microsoft Photos app, the company now lets users import pictures from their mobile device using the Photos Companion app. The feature works over Wi-Fi, which means both your Windows 10 computer and your mobile device will need to be connected to the same network. It’s not clear whether the app will let you view photos from OneDrive on your phone, though.
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In addition to the companion app for Microsoft Photos, Redmond is also working on expanding the features of Story Remix, reports Italian blog Aggiornamenti Lumia. The company is experimenting with the ability to add stickers to videos made with Story Remix, and it’ll likely offer some sort of marketplace where users can get stickers for different stickers like games, movies, etc.
While the Photos Companion app will be a very welcome addition to the Microsoft Photos app, the feature just expands the fragmentation Microsoft has somehow managed to create with these new cross-device experiences for Android and iOS. For one, the Continue on PC and Microsoft Launcher apps already use OneDrive to transfer photos from your phone to your PC. There’s also a Near Share feature coming with Windows 10 Redstone 4 that lets you transfer content between PCs, but not to your phones. Lastly, the Microsoft Photos lets you sync photos between your PC and phone via OneDrive as well.
And the upcoming Photos Companion is effectively another implementation of Near Share, but specifically built for the Photos app and with the ability to work with mobile devices. Put simply, Microsoft really needs to get rid of this fragmentation with an upgraded Near Share feature and a “central” companion app that users can use to transfer all kinds of content between their Windows 10 devices, Android, and iPhone. In other words, they need to make an Apple AirDrop clone, but for Windows 10.