This new Microsoft Windows 10 feature will put ‘Your Phone’ on your desktop

Microsoft wants to put your phone on your desktop. No really, with a new Universal Windows Platform (UWP) app that’s coming to Insider builds soon. The app, called ‘Your Phone,’ will mirror your handset, letting you access text messages, photos, and notifications on any Windows 10 PC from your phone.

Microsoft suggested lots of features, such as allowing users to drag and drop photos from the phone to their PC without having to touch the smartphone (or presumably connecting it to USB). They recently showed a demo at their Build conference showing that you can drag a photo from your desktop straight into a text message on your Android device. iOS was conspicuously absent, which has left some thinking that the same experience won’t be offered on Apple devices. Apple does love to protect their locked garden, so we’ll watch this space to see if anything changes.

For those of you who are security conscious (really though, who isn’t?), The Your Phone app uses local WiFi connections only on Android, with the word being those iOS devices will also need a Bluetooth connection for double-confirmation. The data that users share between their phone and their desktop will never be sent to Microsoft servers, which should alleviate some of the potential privacy issues. When the phone and the PC aren’t connected, some caching happens only on the PC. This approach ensures compliance with the recent EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

As for messaging, the Your Phone app will grab the last month of SMS messages and 25 most recent photos from your smartphone. It won’t mirror all the content on your phone. For example, things like incoming calls won’t be handled by the app, but it’s possible that it might get integrated at a later date.

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Joe Rice-Jones

Maker, meme-r, and unabashed geek with nearly half a decade of blogging experience. If it runs on electricity (or even if it doesn't), Joe probably has one around his office somewhere. His hobbies include photography, animation, and hoarding Reddit gold.