Windows 10 gets a screen mirroring beta which brings Android apps to your PC

Ben Schoon | Mar 12 2019 - 7:30 am PT

Last year Microsoft added the “Your Phone” app to Windows 10 as a way to bring your text messages and notifications from a connected smartphone to your PC. Now, some updates are in testing for that app which enables users to Android apps from their phone onto a Windows 10 PC with screen mirroring.

As reported by The Verge, the latest beta updates available to Windows Insiders are opening up access to a new “phone screen” feature. It requires the latest beta builds of Windows 10 and the Your Phone app, but once enabled brings the Android device’s apps over to your computer via screen mirroring. You can even see a list of apps installed on the device to remotely launch them.

To get this working, there are some specific hardware requirements. For one, the PC itself needs to support Bluetooth Low Energy Peripheral mode. That mode is how the PC talks to your Android device and gets this feature working, but it keeps the list of supported hardware small. The Surface Go is the only Surface device supported so far, and you can check if your PC has support by following Microsoft’s instructions.

Further, only a few Android devices are supported at the moment. The list includes and ends with the Galaxy S8, S8+ and Galaxy S9, S9+. Microsoft says that more Android devices will be supported in the future.