How to make and receive calls on your PC without reaching for your phone.

In these unprecedented times, many of us are working from home on computers and at times, more often than not, juggling between the computer and the phone. But it does not have to be that way. It is possible to use both without any juggling. How? With Microsoft's Your Phone App for Android. This app will get your phone and your Windows 10 computer talking to each other and will route notifications, text messages to your PC. The most exciting feature is the ability to make and receive phone calls on your PC without touching your phone. 

For the magic to work, you will need a PC running Windows 10 version 1803 or higher and a phone running Android 7 or higher. Sorry Mac and iPhone users, nothing for you here.

• Download Microsoft's Your Phone app from the Google Play Store.
• Download Your phone app for your PC from the Microsoft Store. 

You must sign in with a Microsoft account both on your PC and in the app on your phone. After you've signed in, they are ready to talk to each other. But first, make sure both devices are connected to the same network; That would be your home Wi-Fi. You will receive a notification on your phone asking that you allow the connection between your devices. Go ahead and hit allow and Android phone will appear in the Your Phone app on the PC

Open Your Phone on your PC. You will see Calls in the left column. But before you can start using it, a Bluetooth connection must be established between your phone and the computer.

Click Calls and Get Started. Your PC will ask whether you want to "Let Your Phone make phone calls?". Click Yes. From there, just follow the on-screen instructions. Enable Bluetooth on your phone and click Setup on the computer. Click Pair if both PIN matches. That's it. You're all set.

You will see the phone dialer on your PC. Start dialing or use the Search box to find contacts stored on your phone. Note that you can easily switch back to your phone during a call.

Let me know if run into problems during setup or have questions.

Microsoft Launcher 5.9 brings live update to "your original calendar app icon." (Whatever that means.)

Microsoft posted an update today for their Android Launcher. The update has me confused though. The changelog says this: "Live date update is now available on your original calendar app icon, and Microsoft Launcher calendar icon is also updated with a cleaner look."

My "original calendar app" is Google calendar and the app icon is live. In case you're wondering what's a live icon, it's simply an icon that shows you today's date. In other words, this is a feature built into Google Calendar and has been there for a while, like forever. So I really don't know what Microsoft is referring to. Let me know if I'm missing something.

So there you have it. Version 5.9 of Microsoft Launcher for Android brings you live calendar app icon. And the icon has a cleaner look. 

Microsoft Launcher is available for free in Google Play store.

How to: Send web pages from Chrome desktop to your Android phone and vice-versa.

Before diving in, first verify you have the latest version of Chrome installed on your computer and phone, and that you use the same Google account on all your devices. Using the same account is key to synchronizing such things as tabs, favorites across all your devices.

The ability to send tabs or web pages from a device to another is recent. Google took its time to implement, test, deploy the feature, but it’s been available through extensions and third-party software.

I'm going to show you how to send pages to and from your Android device. But first, you have to download and install the latest version of Chrome for Android an all your devices. Once that is done, open a website on your computer in Chrome. Then, with your mouse, right-click on the tab and select "Send to your devices". In doing so, you will see the devices on which you signed in with your Google account. Select the device you want to send the site to. You will receive a notification with the title of the website and the name of the computer from which it was sent on your phone. Tap the notification on your phone to open the page.

Like I said earlier, this works both ways. If for some reason, you want to send a page from your phone to your computer, follow these steps.

Open the site on your Android device. Then click the three vertical dots at the top-right corner and click "Share..." to open the share menu. In the menu, click "Send to your devices" - that's the icon with the Chrome icon - and click the device listed in the "Send to" menu. Click the notification in the "Action Center" on your Windows 10 computer to open the site.

It's as simple as that. I love this feature.

WhatsApp Beta for Android gets separate phone & video icons; Attachment​ icon moved to message box.

WhatsApp Beta on Android got a nice little update with placements of some icon made more logical. The Attachment icon which used to be at the top of the app has moved to the bottom, inside the text box alongside the camera icon, thus making it easily accessible to attach documents, photos etc. 

Old

New

With the Attachment icon made more accessible, WhatsApp has filled the void at the top with a video call icon. Remember, not so long ago, WhatsApp introduced video calls which required tapping the Phone icon first before choosing between Phone and Video calls. From now on, a single tap is needed to quickly initiate whichever call method you choose. This makes more sense. 

This update is available in the beta version of WhatsApp, but it will make its way to the official version of the app soon. If you can't wait to get these update and are not afraid to get your hands dirty with unstable software, join the WhatsApp beta.