The history of Android applications on Windows is convoluted, with various failed and cancelled attempts by Microsoft to allow Windows users to run Android applications behind us. Now that these attempts are well dead and buried, Microsoft is going at it from a different perspective: what if you could continue where you left off on your Android phone, right on your Windows machine, but without having to run an Android applications on Windows?
We are beginning to gradually roll out the ability to seamlessly resume using your favorite apps from your Android phone on your Windows 11 PC to Windows Insiders in the Dev and Beta Channels. To start with, you will be able to resume or continue listening to your favorite Spotify tracks and episodes right from where you left off on the Spotify app on your Android phone.
First, start listening to one of your favorite songs or episodes in the Spotify app on your Android phone. On your PC (running the latest Insider Preview builds in the Dev or Beta Channels) a ‘Resume alert’ will appear on your taskbar. When you click on that alert, Spotify’s desktop app will open and the same track will now continue playing on your PC.
↫ Amanda Langowski and Brandon LeBlanc
So basically, the Spotify application on Windows will know where you left off on the Spotify application on Android, and resume playback. This is table-stakes for most services, and it doesn’t seem like it would warrant such a big announcement from Microsoft, and while I don’t use Spotify, I assume it was already built into the service anyway. It seems all Microsoft is doing is providing a nice little notification to expose that functionality a little bit more clearly, but it also explains that you need to manually link your device and the Spotify Android application to the Windows PC and Spotify Windows application, which seems like a lot of manual steps.
Does this mean every application developer needs to opt into this and add this feature, thereby making it dead on arrival? Well, yes, you’ll need to add support on both sides of the equation, which I can guarantee you very few developers will do. Not only does this feature require you to already have a Windows version of your application – which, statistically, you don’t – it also requires you to do the work yourself, and manually apply to Microsoft to even gain access to the required APIs and SDKs. The odds of this feature making it beyond a few very big names Microsoft can give money to is slim.
I find myself resuming podcasts between my iPhone and Mac all the time.
I take it for granted, just like notes, obsidian (with the help of iCloud sync) etc.
Now if anyone has an elegant solution for syncing my emacs orgs between my Mac and Linux machines I am a taker!
I am looking right now at unison and syncthing…
Unison is brilliant and cross-platform support is excellent.
My setup uses 2 FreeBSD boxes for storage, using ZFS and HAST.
However, the config files for all services running across 3 boxes (/usr/local/etc stuff) is propagated via unison and its been working perfectly well (including file ownership and permission flags) for 10+ years.
I’ve also used it with and without vpn to backup and keep in sync my Windows laptop on the go with my FreeBSD home workstation. It is a thing of beauty.
I think you’ve missed the point on this one Thom
This is allows you to resume the App State. Effectively seamless transition from one device to another.
An example might be im reading a specifc email on my phone, I get to my computer to action it and thats the email I continue to look at.
I dont need to go back into Outlook, find the same email and/or the draft I was looking on. I literally pick up from where I left off.
Say this comment, im currently writing it on my phone. If I sit at my PC, how do I continue it? I cant… id need to copy the text and send it to myself somehow then paste it back into a comment.
This allows me to switch device and resume writing but shout into the storm
Adurbe,
I had to take a much closer look at the API so see what it actually did. And it doesn’t appear to do anything to transfer the state at all. It provides a standard in which the switchover can happen transparently for the user, but the application itself is responsible for implementing it. The documentation puts it this way:
I don’t think this SDK will cut it. Since microsoft isn’t doing any of the heavy lifting, the onus is on developers to implement all the synchronizing themselves, which they didn’t need microsoft for in the first place. So I share Thom’s skepticism over developers actually using it unless maybe microsoft pays them to.
Say this comment, im currently writing it on my phone. If I sit at my PC, how do I continue it? I cant… id need to copy the text and send it to myself somehow then paste it back into a comment.
If I am reading it correctly it only works in one direction.
In principal I agree it could be neat, but this just lets the user install and invoke the application (which to me as a user isn’t that big a deal). It’s the application itself that needs to implement the stateful syncing. That’s a big deal, but the ms API doesn’t help here.
And MS will happily know which MS accounts use which apps to do what.
Great. Resuming just at the exact location of baby shark is obviously worth giving megatech yet another grand data point about me.
Great job from Microsoft. such a requested feature by so many client. Then even provided full dark theme support up to file dialogs not long ago. They sure have some cash to spare.