Windows 11 preview lets you see your phone’s photos in File Explorer

“Hey, can you send me that pic?” If that question sounds familiar, a new Windows 11 feature that Microsoft is testing may prove to be handy.

Microsoft tied Android phones a bit closer to Windows 11 today, introducing a new feature that will allow you to access your phone’s photos via File Explorer while untethered. You may be aware that you’ve been able to do this with a cord connecting your Windows PC and a phone for years, accessing the DCIM folder for any recent photos your phone has shot. Now, you can leave the cord at home.

There are, in fact, many ways to transfer a photo from your phone to elsewhere, whether it be sharing the file from OneDrive, emailing it or texting it to a friend, and so on. On Windows 11, you can also use the Photos app to hunt it down, either from the local PC or the cloud, or use Phone Link instead. But not everyone likes diving into an app or pulling out your phone, especially when you’re already working on your PC when a friend asks you for a recent photo. With multiple apps common to both the phone and the PC, most of us look at the two devices as extensions to one another. This just furthers that idea.

Microsoft hasn’t said whether the feature will work with Android and Apple iPhone smartphones, but Brandon LeBlanc, senior program manager on the Windows Insider Program Team, said that the feature was designed for both.

Microsoft

The new feature is part of Windows 11 Build 23471, a build for the Dev Channel. (Technically, this means that the code is being tested, and may never see the light of day.) If you do subscribe to Dev Channel builds, you’ll see a new “Add Phone Photos” button at the top of the File Explorer, in the Gallery view. What you’ll then need to do is scan the resulting QR code with your phone to set up a connection between the two devices. (Doing so may ask you to opt in to a beta version of OneDrive, Microsoft says.)

Incidentally, Microsoft is adding the ability to tear out and merge tabs in the new tabbed File Explorer interface. That’s handy, because dragging files back and forth between various folders is what the tabbed interface was designed to do. Just don’t drag the scroll bar or try to close the window while the File Explorer process is trying to load files, or File Explorer may crash. Beta code, you know.

Among the various bug fixes available is a new option to prefer cellular connections (if available and if your PC supports them) if Wi-Fi coverage is poor.

If this code does debut, the likeliest candidate would be a “23H2” release sometime in the fall.