Connecting Galaxy Note 10 to Windows 10

Microsoft has created two apps called Your Phone Companion for smartphones and Your Phone for PCs. With those two applications, you can enable a feature that is often dubbed as Link to Windows. Link to Windows is useful for connecting Windows 10 to virtually any smartphones—whether it’s Android or iOS devices, including the Samsung Galaxy Note 10 Series.

Linking Windows 10 and Galaxy Note 10

The Link to Windows feature lets your phone connect to Windows to do things like viewing phone’s photos, messages, calls & notifications. When you explore these, you can also reply to any message, make phone calls, refresh or removing notifications, and transfer photos from phone to PC. Unfortunately, you can only see and copy photos, not videos (or any other types of files for that matter).

One thing to note is that there is a special privilege in the Galaxy Note 10 that is not found in any other smartphone. Samsung put a dedicated service on the Galaxy Note 10, so you don’t have to download the Your Phone Companion app. Not only that, but there’s also one amazing feature that is exclusively available for the owner of Note 10 Series. So, what kind of limited feature is it? It’s called the Phone Screen option.

Galaxy Note 10 Phone Screen Options

With the Phone Screen, you have the ability to stream/mirror the phone’s screen to your PC display seamlessly. You can operate your phone using your PC’s mouse and keyboard as well. Any change that happened on the smartphone or PC will be reflected on both devices.

Pretty cool, huh? Now, let’s take a look at how you can connect your Galaxy Note 10 to your Windows 10 PC using Your Phone app:

1. Make sure you have a Microsoft account and both your PC & phone are connected to the same network.
2. Open the Your Phone app and sign in to your Microsoft Account (if you haven’t already).
3. To open the app, hit the Windows key on your keyboard > type your phone > hit Enter. If you have an up-to-date version of Windows 10, the app is already installed on your PC. Otherwise, you need to download it from the Microsoft Store.
4. Now, we move onto the Galaxy Note 10. Open your Quick Settings menu by swiping downward on the smartphone screen, then tap Link to Windows. As a side note, older Samsung models and other smartphones from different manufacturers need to download and install the Your Phone Companion app from Play Store or App Store instead.
5. Sign in to your Microsoft Account using the provided method (usually QR code). When any prompts or notifications show up requesting permission, tap Allow.

Now your phone is already connected to your Windows 10 PC. Simply go back to the Your Phone app on your PC and start viewing photos, messages, notifications, and the likes. At first, the app will need your permission to access these pieces of information. You may need to go to the Settings app on your phone and grant the app the approval to do that. The instruction on how to do so should be explained in the Your Phone app, you only need to follow it.

Features

Once you grant the app all the permissions it needs, you can now start taking advantage of all its convenient features. Should you want to disable one of the features, you can do so by going to clicking the Settings icon at the bottom-left of the Your Phone app. There, you can alter the settings in various ways, including the mentioned one earlier.

To transfer photos from phone to PC, you can drag and drop the displayed photos on the Your Phone app to any directory you want, like the PC’s desktop. In addition to replying, you can also compose and send a new text message. As for the phone call feature, a Bluetooth connection is needed instead, though it seems rather pointless since you can always use your phone directly for that.

The exceptional one is, of course, the Phone screen option. You can literally do anything to your phone using the PC, like tweak the phone setting, use the apps, or play video games. It’s probably not a stretch to say that the Your Phone app for Galaxy Note 10 is an adequate replacement for any Android emulator out there if you simply want to play Android games on your PC. However, you do need your phone to operate it at the same time.