Phone Link: photos and texts from your phone, right on your computer

You photograph a whiteboard after a meeting, a paper document, or a product — and then go through a whole ordeal getting the photo onto your computer: emailing it to yourself, through a “saved messages” chat, or with a cable. Yet Windows has a built-in solution: the Phone Link app. After a one-time pairing, you can see photos from your phone right on your computer just seconds after taking them — plus messages, notifications, and on many phones even calls placed from the computer.

How to do it

1. On your computer, open the Phone Link app (it's built into Windows — find it via the Start menu).
2. On an Android phone, install the Link to Windows app and scan the pairing QR code from your computer's screen. Both devices need an internet connection.
3. After pairing, grant the requested permissions on your phone — photos, messages, notifications. You can decline any of them; the link still works in a reduced form.
4. In the computer app you'll then find tabs: Photos (recent shots from your phone — drag a photo straight into a document or email with the mouse), Messages (type texts with your computer keyboard), and Notifications.
5. iPhone support is more limited — it handles messages, calls, and notifications over Bluetooth, but without access to photos. iPhone owners are better served by a cloud photo gallery.

A typical scenario

You're putting together a report and need a photo of an installation your technician took with your phone an hour ago. The old way: unlock the phone, find the photo, email it to yourself, switch to mail, download it, insert it. The new way: open Photos in Phone Link and drag the shot straight into the document. The phone can stay in your bag the whole time.

A parenting scene: you're deep in focused writing at work, your child's after-school activity ends, and they text asking who's picking them up today. You reply from your computer keyboard mid-sentence, no reaching for the phone, no losing your focus.

What you get out of it

• Photos without detours: getting a photo from phone to document shrinks from five steps to a drag with the mouse.
• Less reaching for your phone: texts and notifications get handled from the computer — and the phone doesn't pull you into the mindless scrolling that often follows.
• One workflow: everything happens on the one screen you're sitting at anyway.

Pro tip

In the app's settings, filter which notifications from your phone are allowed to show up on your computer — keep messages and calls, turn off social media and games. Otherwise you'll import every distraction that comes with the phone too. Combined with Do Not Disturb, the ideal setup is: the phone sits in your bag, what matters reaches you on screen, and everything else waits.