Microsoft is announcing new cross-platform experiences for Windows 10 at Build 2018 this week. These features, which are expected in Redstone 5, will be shown off by Joe Belfiore tomorrow during the day 2 keynote.
Your Phone is the first of these new experiences.
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Microsoft is positioning Your Phone as a window to your phone from your Windows 10 PC so that your PC works better with your mobile device, even if it isn’t built by Microsoft. (And it won’t be.) The app is supposed to give users instant access to the text messages, photos, and notifications on their phone from their PC without requiring any other app.
With Your Phone, you will be able to take a photo from your phone and drop it into a document on your PC without needing to do anything else. At least that’s how Microsoft is advertising the app; we will have to wait and see if the actual functionality will live up to the promise. The company says that the new Your Phone experience will be available to Windows Insiders soon. In fact, it’s already present in the latest Insider build.
But it’s not just Your Phone. Microsoft is taking cross-platform experiences in Windows 10 a step further with updates to Microsoft Launcher on Android and Microsoft Edge on the iPhone. Redmond is bringing cross-device app launching for Timeline to Microsoft Launcher, so you’ll be able to pick up from where you left off across your devices. The company is also making it possible to access your browsing sessions stored on Timeline from your iPhone using the Edge browser.
It is important to note that this is the first Build since Windows’ former lead Terry Myerson announced his departure from the firm. And there aren’t a lot of consumer-focused Windows announcements at this year’s Build, which will be disappointing to many. But Redstone 5 is supposed to be a huge update for the OS — and so far, we are only aware of some major features such as Sets, Your Phone, the new screenshotting tool, and a dark theme (and tabs!) for File Explorer.
innitrichie
<blockquote><a href="#272464"><em>In reply to UK User:</em></a></blockquote><p><br></p><p>I'm using a Dell desktop on 1803 and just saw the Windows encountered a problem after clean booting up my machine this evening. Luckily it recovered itself upon a second boot attempt, but yeah probably not the wisest decision for me to rush in and upgrade all my machines already.</p>
innitrichie
<p>The "Your Phone" stuff sounds very promising and an actual useful feature for Windows 10 users, unlike a lot of the other nonsense they've headlined in previous years.</p><p><br></p><p>Some OEMs (Dell and HP) already offer some of this stuff but they have chosen to artificially restrict it to latest models of their hardware. I guess they have evidence that shows some morons will actually buy a new PC to get text messages from their phone onto a new premium PC. But now I am happy to see Microsoft coming up with a solution all of their own.</p><p><br></p><p>This is something that works very well on macoS and iOS devices, and I'm happy to see Microsoft is working on bringing more of this to Windows 10 and iOS/Android handsets. I already really like the way I can send a webpage in Edge on mobile to one of my larger screen devices. The Edge handoff feature has worked everytime I've wanted to use it so far too, unlike handoff on iOS which quite often fails me.</p>