Forgive my unabashed nerdery, but for years now, I’ve had a cross-platform productivity dream.
Unlike those under the tightly controlled Apple iSpell, y’see, I don’t believe in limiting myself to any one particular platform or type of product. Sure, I use Android around the clock. But I also use a Windows computer during the work day. And I rely on ChromeOS in the evenings. You get the idea.
That sort of setup is spectacular when it comes to diversity and being able to use whatever devices work best for you, no matter who made ’em or what sort of software they’re running. But sometimes, it can also create its own share of awkward challenges.
That brings us back to my dream. For years, I’ve been working to find a swift ‘n’ simple way to share text copied from my phone to a computer where I’m working — and vice-versa. ‘Twas a time when Chrome quietly allowed this sort of seamless clipboard syncing to happen in all directions, but alas, Google pulled that possibility away before it ever made its way out of the shadows.
More recently, a brilliant little off-the-beaten app by OnePlus filled the void and briefly turned my dream into a similarly effortless reality. But then, earlier this year, OnePlus unceremoniously shut the app down.
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Today, I’m happy to report that the dream is back alive and kickin’. Turns out at some point in the not-too-distant past, Google snuck a new feature into its cross-platform Nearby Share system that makes it not only possible but also completely painless to send copied text from your Android device to a connected computer’s clipboard and, in at least in some scenarios, back in the other direction, too.
It’s not a feature that’s prominently promoted or that you’d ever realize exists if you didn’t go poking around and exploring. It’s completely unmarked and occasionally even invisible, in fact — but it’s there, all right. And if you share my cross-platform productivity dream, it might be just the time-saving superpower you didn’t know you needed.
The Android-to-desktop Nearby Share secret
Nearby Share, if you aren’t familiar, is an Android feature that lets you send stuff wirelessly to other devices where you’re also signed in. It works between multiple Android devices, most obviously, but it also lets you share things between your Android phone and a Chromebook or even a Windows computer.
And while the system is primarily designed for passing files between devices, it has a spectacular option for sharing text, too.
The first part of the process will work with any Windows computer or Chromebook where Nearby Share is available. The feature is already built into ChromeOS, so there’s nothing you need to do to set up it up there. With Windows, you’ll need to grab the official, Google-made Nearby Share app for Windows, then open it and follow the steps to install…
2023-11-09 18:41:05
Article from www.computerworld.com