The “Your Phone” app is new in Windows 10’s October 2018 Update, available today. You can now text from your PC and easily access photos—assuming you have an Android phone.

In the future, you’ll even be able to mirror your phone’s entire screen to your Windows 10 PC and see notifications from your phone on your PC.

Sorry, iPhone users: Most of these features are only available if you have an Android phone. Apple doesn’t let third-party developers like Microsoft integrate as deeply with your phone’s operating system.

RELATED: Windows 10's October 2018 Update is Out Now: The Best Features and How to Get It

Here’s what’s available starting October 2: When you update, you’ll see a new “Your Phone” icon on your PC’s desktop. This launches the Your Phone app, which guides you through connecting your PC to your phone. Sign in with the same Microsoft account you use on your PC and you’ll be connected.

If you have an Android phone running Android 7.0 or later, you can easily access photos from your phone in the Your Phone app. As Microsoft showed off, you can drag a photo from the Your Phone app directly to Photoshop or another Windows application—no extra file management required.

You can also see your latest text messages in the Your Phone app and send text messages right from your PC. The Your Phone app becomes a powerful text messaging tool that works with your PC’s keyboard. Once again, this feature requires an Android phone.

iPhone (and Android) users get a “Continue on PC” share feature that will send links from your phone to your PC. That’s helpful if you start reading a web page on your phone and want to switch to your PC.

Microsoft has announced even more features to arrive in a future update. At the October 2, 2018 event, Microsoft showed off screen mirroring. In the future, you will be able to mirror your Android phone’s entire screen to your PC, viewing it in a window on your desktop. Microsoft demonstrated this feature with a Snapchat call, but it should work with any app.

Other features, such as notification mirroring, have also been promised for a future update. Many of these features were already available in Windows 10, but Microsoft is making them easier to find and use.

RELATED: All the Ways Windows 10 Works With Android or iPhone

Image Credit: Microsoft

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Profile Photo for Chris Hoffman Chris Hoffman
Chris Hoffman is Editor-in-Chief of How-To Geek. He's written about technology for over a decade and was a PCWorld columnist for two years. Chris has written for The New York Times and Reader's Digest, been interviewed as a technology expert on TV stations like Miami's NBC 6, and had his work covered by news outlets like the BBC. Since 2011, Chris has written over 2,000 articles that have been read more than one billion times---and that's just here at How-To Geek.
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