Soon, Microsoft could enable wireless phone-to-PC content transfer capabilities
What's the story
When you have to move some data from your phone to PC (or reverse), the go-to options are fairly limited - Bluetooth, USB cable, or a third-party transfer like via SHAREit.
This has long been a problem, but Microsoft now appears to be working on a solution, one it might offer with the "Your Phone" app on Windows 10.
Here's all about it.
App
What is 'Your Phone', how it works?
Since 2018, Your Phone has been serving as a phone-syncing solution for Windows 10 users.
The program links with its companion app on Android and iOS devices and syncs messages, notifications, photos, and some apps with PC.
This way, users get the ability to manage everything, from new messages to app notifications, on their PC itself - no need to pick up the phone.
Feature
Now, Your Phone is getting content transfer capabilities
Just recently, Microsoft started releasing the ability to make/answer calls from the Your Phone app.
The feature comes handy, but as it seems, that is not the only thing Microsoft is developing for the app. The folks at Windows Latest have also spotted signs of a feature that could let you transfer data wirelessly from the connected phone to PC or vice versa.
Development
Your Phone's latest build indicated feature's development
While digging into the code of the latest build of Your Phone, the outlet noted certain references to the content sharing feature: SharedContentPhotos, ContentTransferCopyPaste, and ContentTransferDragDrop.
Then, after delving into it and using a hack, they were able to enable the feature, although it didn't work as they expected, maybe because Microsoft is not yet done with the development.
Setting change
Either way, updated settings confirmed the feature
While the feature didn't work, the team did note a major change in the settings of the Your Phone app after enabling it - a toggle for "Cross-device copy and paste".
The option's description stated that some metadata will be transferred between devices each time some "content" is copied, seemingly confirming that phone-to-PC (and vice versa) file transfer is indeed coming into Your Phone.
Launch
Launch timeline remains unclear
As of now, there's no clarity on what kind of files the new feature will support - photos/videos, documents or other file types, as well?
Also, there's no clarity on the launch timeline of file transfer capabilities.
Microsoft generally releases Your Phone features in the beta channel first, so we expect Windows Insiders will probably be the first ones to get it.