Windows 11 Will Soon Add Your Android Phone To File Explorer (theverge.com) 56
Microsoft has started testing a new way to access your Android phone from directly within Windows 11's File Explorer. From a report: Windows Insiders are now able to test this new feature, which lets you wirelessly browse through folders and files on your Android phone. The integration in File Explorer means your Android device appears just like a regular USB device on the left-hand side, with the ability to copy or move files between a PC and Android phone, and rename or delete them. It's certainly a lot quicker than using the existing Phone Link app.
Ah Microsoft, always 5 years late to the party ... (Score:5, Funny)
I'm kind of surprised it has taken Microsoft this long to support Android. Guess they were too busy pushing Zune support to notice that everyone switched to iPhones and Android. /s
Re:Ah Microsoft, always 5 years late to the party (Score:4)
>"I'm kind of surprised it has taken Microsoft this long to support Android."
Yep.
On any of my many Linux systems, regardless of distro or desktop environment, I can plug in my Android devices and they just appear in whatever file manager I am using. I will qualify that this is not through wireless/network, just through a regular USB cable. No "drivers", no "applications", no "cloud", no special settings, just plug it in and give permission on phone. Has been that way for many years.
In the rare cases I would rather do it wirelessly, I just use the Airdroid Android app and plain Firefox on the Linux desktop. This connection gives additional functionality, such as remote photo taking, seeing battery charge, signal strength, reading/sending text messages, looking at phone logs, seeing notifications, etc. https://play.google.com/store/... [google.com] There are other similar applications as well. Again, no cloud needed, no drivers, although it is an app on the Android device installed.
The article is about a wireless way to do it, but it also has lots of requirements to make it happen.
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It's the same on Windows. Android file transfer over USB has been supported since Vista. It's actually a USB standard.
Microsoft let you run Android apps on Windows for a while. They have had other integrations too, but they all get killed off because nobody uses them.
This though... I might actually use. I use FTP at the moment.
Re: Ah Microsoft, always 5 years late to the party (Score:2)
Not the same in Windows.
Over USB, yes, it has always worked.
Over Wifi, no.
You can run Samba on Android, but unless it's rooted, it won't be on the standard port. And Windows has no way to select an alternate port.
USB puts wear on the phone's connector. Many SOCs also have USB 2.0 data speed. But the Wi-Fi can rub at AC or AX speeds and actually ends up being faster than USB.
I tried AirDroid and many other apps before. There wasn't a single one that allowed me to do what I wanted, which was to mount the ph
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The "My Phone Companion" or "Link to Windows" apps have existed for at least 4 years. I use it to send text messages from my PC, view images, control media, and get notifications. It's awesome. 10/10.
Late to the party (Score:5, Informative)
I've been using KDE Connect [f-droid.org] for like a decade.
So I can use my phone as an SSD? (Score:2)
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Congrats? I just asked around and precisely zero people were willing to switch from Windows to Linux for this feature. Microsoft isn't late to the party. They are having their own party because they aren't interested in yours.
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Huh! Thanks. Wish I'd known about that sooner. I guess your comment is late to the party since we won't need it soon. ^_^
Sounds like a great Idea... (Score:2)
Sounds great (Score:2)
Now let's see if they deliver. The year is today and it should be a seamless experience to connect my phone however and then it just *works*, wireless transfer speed aside. I tried the phone link stuff before but decided not to pursue further because it was both unreliable and inconvenient.
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The only possible way it just works is if you log into your Microsoft account on both devices, agree to a EULA that gives them remote access to everything at any time on your device (you already agreed to that on desktop), and then deal with Edge opening up for some reason every time you double click on your phone.
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"edge opening up" cuts deep man
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MSFT: "Our user engagement with Edge is up 900%! People love Edge!"
Wired hasn't been a problem for a while (Score:4, Informative)
A USB cable and file transfer enabled has caused my phone to show up in explorer for some time. It'd be nicer if it showed up like a regular drive with an assigned drive letter, but I haven't had any issues.
For wireless access, I use Ghost Commander via SMB. Again, never been much of an issue, though it would be nice to have that work from the PC side so I can have a full PC interface to work with.
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Yeah, I was gonna say this is how I grab a single photo off the phone when I need it on the PC and always has been.
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Yea wired has worked for 13+ years over several phones. Agree that it appearing as a real drive would be nicer, but I had always considered that as something which needed to be fixed on the phone side.
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A USB cable and file transfer enabled has caused my phone to show up in explorer for some time.
Who said anything about a problem? Not everyone wants to reach for a cable to plug in every time they want to do something.
That said I wonder what the point here is. With virtually all phones auto connecting your media to a cloud device your computer usually is able to "wirelessly" access the things you need anyway.
sshfs (Score:3)
Recently I have been using SimpleSSHD plus sshfs to copy files to/from my Android device. It's been more reliable than Windoze with a cable, which will sometimes just forget that the device is connected.
Done Better By OSS, As Usual (Score:5, Interesting)
https://www.fjsoft.at/ [fjsoft.at]
File transfers, contact and calendar sync, notes, SMS sending and receiving, call logging, per-phone profiles...basically everything I'd ever want to use a computer to do on an Android phone, for free, over USB *or* wi-fi, open-source, everything locally stored...
One guy named Franz > everyone at Microsoft.
Re: Done Better By OSS, As Usual (Score:4, Informative)
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I get your point, but your example is not OSS, only freeware. A better example would be KDE Connect.
Thanks for the catch; you're correct. While the EULA is pretty broad regarding usage, I didn't find any OSS license indications or source code anywhere, either.
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>"https://www.fjsoft.at/ [fjsoft.at] File transfers, contact and calendar sync, notes, SMS sending and receiving, call logging, per-phone profiles...basically everything I'd ever want to use a computer to do on an Android phone, for free, over USB *or* wi-fi, open-source, everything locally stored..."
I see no evidence that "MyPhoneExplorer" is Open Source. At least, not anywhere on their website. Also, it is MS-Windows only. You can pretty much do all the same things with AirDroid, but it works with
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Yeah... currently "freeware" until he gets enough users and sells it to somebody who will start charging for it as it typically the case these days.
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Lots of great stuff coming from German authors these days.
Prost!
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But it's not open source, merely free.
At any point in the future it could stop being free, as well.
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Even Conversations (xmpp client) for encrypted messaging is 8 bucks on Google Play Store.. but also free on F-droid.. so, I don't blame them for wanting to make some money, it's definitel
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Yeah, and I'm not against freeware, there's some awesome freeware and freeware-adjacent stuff out there, and I personally use Reaper (freeware-adjacent) and think it's a wonderful option for a professional-level DAW for example.
OSS is the pinnacle of the pyramid, but somehow ya gotta pay the bills.
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Even if you don't want it. (Score:1)
Now your phone can also get Nadella's spam! Oh Boy!
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It'll be a cold day in hell when I put ANYTHING Microsoft on my Android phone..
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You have it backwards. The idea is that you can get your phone stuff on your computer once it is set up.
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I read the article, one still needs to install a "Link to Windows" app from Microsoft on your Android device.
This is in contrast to just using the in-built file transfer protocols via Bluetooth or USB that Android exposes natively.
The Samsung Goldberg Rube 7 (Score:2)
Not having a free port or cable (Score:3)
The fact that all of a PC's USB ports happen to be occupied by other devices, or that the only cable you have handy is a charging-only cable that passes power and not data. I seem to remember one major laptop maker making a thin laptop with only a single USB C port, expecting users to dock through a hub that passes power upstream to the host and data downstream to several devices.
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>"or that the only cable you have handy is a charging-only cable that passes power and not data."
That is a good point. It is a shame those [cheesy charge-only cables] even exist, as if having proper data/charge cables included with things would be that expensive. I am kinda spoiled because I tend to make sure ALL my cables will do both and toss anything that can't into a reject box.
>"I seem to remember one major laptop maker making a thin laptop with only a single USB C port"
Yeah, an annoying trend;
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charge-only has its merits - random coffee shops and airports and your phone just needs juice.
Re:The Samsung Goldberg Rube 7 (Score:5, Informative)
This new option adds wireless. Android phones used to show up as either a PTP (digital camera) or MTP (media storage) device. It would take a lot more unnecessary emulation to make it act as a generic mass storage device, especially since the phone also has to keep access to the storage during this time.
It used to work OK most of the time, but newer devices with USB-C seem to have a broken implementation. The phones seem to get stuck trying to act as a host device (for connecting USB accessories to the phone) instead of as a USB peripheral device. And any attempts to switch will get you an error message. I don't know if the fault lies with Android itself or the specific manufacturers (multiple). And even when supposedly in host mode, the computer will sometimes see it as a storage device anyway.
In related news... (Score:4, Funny)
In related news, Microsoft are soon to release a bug report when it was found that this new feature was "accidentally" copying the entire contents of your Android device to OneDrive.
Followed closely by another bug due to the data in OneDrive being "accedentally" fed into their AI models.
It's worse than that (Score:2)
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Privacy aside - actually, that sounds like one useful feature if your managers are too stingy to buy you a $30 headset and a $50 webcam.
They want us to return to the office but there's at least one team member working remotely that day so three of you crowd around one of the few desktop PCs with a webcam via Teams. And then they wonder why we're more productive working from home.
(Oh, management said they ordered a bunch of webcams and stuff for a 30 person office but it never arrived...)
Win11 will add my android phone to explorer (Score:2)
I refuse!
What are you protecting? (Score:2)
Are you keeping your Android data safe from MS-Windows, or your desktop data safe from Alphabet/Android?
On second thought . . . never mind. I recommend reformatting both devices using a maul hammer.
late to the party (Score:2)
I've been transferring images and data from my Android devices for ages using a USB 3 (and previously USB 2 and 1) cable, it pops right up in file explorer as an external device with no hinderances.
If they're talking about it working over wifi, great. Could have used that 15 years ago.
No, it will not (Score:2)
I cannot even conceive of being so extremely stupid as to be giving Windows access to my phone. Not ging to happen.
AirDrive (Score:1)
I'd rather them fix ADB or remember Explorer sessi (Score:2)
I'd rather them fix ADB (not working at all via the wired interface), remember Explorer sessions, or make proper bookmarks like a browser has instead of a monolithic list of pinned items mixed in with other hard coded items.
It seems like they stopped innovating years or decades ago, and now they're picking features to implement... somehow. This is a good reminder to install Linux and give Dolphin another try.
Of Course. DUH (Score:2)
This will only work when when:
1 you log in with a Microsnot 'cloud' account
2 you provide them with the phone number of the phone
3 they can now aggregate your PC activities and your phone activities
4 PROFIT!
Dolphin file manager anyone? (Score:1)
Now we just need Apple to follow suit and support MTP on their iPhones :P