The Windows 10 Anniversary Update
is out this week, and it offers an interesting mobile feature aimed not
at Windows Phone, but at Android: mirrored Android notifications. The
idea is that when a notification pops up on your Android phone, it
should also pop up on your Windows PC, allowing you to then deal with
your notifications remotely on the PC. For now most of the features come
with a well-deserved "beta" tag, but it's worth a look to see where
this feature is and how much more work needs to be done.
Beaming Android notifications to your PC isn't
a new idea—third-party apps like Pushbullet and AirDroid can already do
it, but it's still interesting that Microsoft has introduced its own
first-party implementation (it's also a tacit admission that Microsoft's own mobile platform is quickly fading). The
way all these services work is to basically "become a really big
smartwatch." The services plug in to all of the remote notification
capabilities Google originally introduced for Android Wear, but they're
available to any app that is granted the proper permissions. We'd expect
our ideal notification service to be able to do everything Android
Wear can do with a notification, just inside of a PC app instead of a
watch.
In Android 4.3, Google added a Notification
API, which can mirror the entire notification panel to another
device. Apps can sign up to be a Notification Listener Service,
which allows the remote app to dismiss notifications on the phone and to
remotely press the notification action buttons. These are things like
"Archive" or "Delete" for e-mails and "Reply" for e-mails, IMs, and
SMSes. The transportation of these notifications all happens at the OS
level and requires no developer support.
Google also added the Remote Input API for
messaging apps. After remotely pressing the "reply" button, normally
this just pops up the keyboard on a phone and opens a reply
dialog, which isn't very useful. The Remote Input API allows the remote
device to send a string of text (via voice or typing) to the device
instead, and this text gets posted as a message. This is something
developers specifically have to build into their apps, but most of the
big messaging apps support it.
With those capabilities available, our wish list for a good notification mirroring service becomes clear:
Display all notifications quickly.
Display all the information from a notification.
Remotely dismiss notifications.
Remotely press action buttons.
Remotely send "reply" text.
Let me "dive in" to a notification by launching the appropriate app/website when clicked on.
Can Windows do it?
Setup
To set this up, first you'll need to open the
Cortana app on your Android phone, go to the settings, and pick "sync
notifications."
The list of features. Note that everything with an asterisk is in beta.
Give Cortana access to your notification panel and
you'll be able to send over notifications for any app.
Next head to the Cortana settings on your Windows 10 device.
Turn on Notification Sync.
You should see your device listed.
All of these services require some kind of
account system and desktop app to sync notifications between Android and
the PC. For Pushbullet, that's an OAuth Google login and a Chrome
extension; for AirDroid it's an OAuth login and a Windows app; for
Windows 10's notification mirroring it's a Microsoft account and
Cortana. You've already got Cortana on your Windows 10 box—you just need
to install the Cortana Android app, sign in to a Microsoft account on
both devices, and give Cortana lots of permissions.
As expected, Cortana asks for the
"notification access" permission, which means it uses the Notification
Listener Service just like Android Wear. The Cortana app has check boxes
for "Missed calls," "Incoming messages," and "low battery
notifications," but the real power is the "App notification sync" check
box. This makes the previous three options redundant and gives you
notifications for all your apps. In this screen, you can add or remove
any app from the push notification list, which is important since you
probably won't want every notification making the jump to your PC.
On the Windows side of things, you'll need to
enable Cortana (if it isn't already enabled) and turn on the "Sync
Notifications" option. There you should see your phone in the list of
devices, and as long as that happens, setup is done.
What works
It works! Here's an SMS notification on Windows
10. First it pops up in the lower right corner...
Then it moves up to the Action Center.
You can expand the notification to get a reply
box, where you can type out an SMS on your PC.
After you hit send, Cortana on your Android phone will spawn a confirmation message.
Remote dismiss works, but only if you press the special button.
Here's a missed call notification. Again, you can type an SMS reply.
The gear button will let you block apps from
showing notifications or access the notification settings.
As far as the notification settings are concerned,
your phone is an app and has the same settings as any other app.
At Build 2016,
Microsoft promised Android SMS mirroring and that remotely dismissing
notifications would work on the Windows 10 Anniversary Update. For the
most part, it does.
Your Android notifications will show up in the
Win 10 notification panel, right next to native notifications. They'll
have a tag that says "From [name of phone]" to denote that they are
remote notifications. Like you would expect, an SMS pops up with a text
of the message and the sender's name. After you expand the notification,
there's a "reply" box that lets you quickly type out a response, which
Cortana sends to your phone and delivers. On the phone, Cortana will
spawn a confirmation message letting you know the SMS was sent. Missed
call notifications work pretty much the same way—including the reply box
so you can respond with a text message.
Remotely dismissing notifications is an
important feature, since after a hard day of computing on your PC, you
don't want to pick up your smartphone and see a bunch of redundant
notifications. Dismissing a notification on your PC should also dismiss
the notification on the phone. Windows 10 can remotely dismiss Android
notifications, but it only does it on one of the dismiss methods.
The problem is there are many dismiss
methods. Basically the "new" Dismiss button—the big checkbox button with
"Dismiss" text at the bottom of every Android notification—will
remotely dismiss a notification. All the "old" Windows 10 methods of
dismissing a notification—the "X" button in the top right, the "clear
all" button, and swiping away a notification—will only dismiss the
Windows notification, leaving the Android phone notification present.
Notification dismissal doesn't work the other way, either. Clearing a
notification on your phone will not remove it from Windows.
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