Gadgetory

there are lots of different reasons you might want to control an Android device from your PC for instance maybe get a text or what's up what's you're working and you wanna be able to respond quickly without having to get up from your computer maybe just want to share your mouse and keyboard or maybe you want to transfer files between your devices in this video we're gonna look at seven different ways that you can control an Android device from a PC but we're not just going to be looking at screen mirroring apps were also going to look at some other slightly more interesting options as well so I'm going to run through seven different apps that allow you to control your Android device on your PC in different ways for nearly any app like this you're going to need an app on the phone and then you're going to need a PC a piece of software on the PC as well so they can sync together so in most cases you just download the app from the Play Store and you download the software from the website install them both and then join onto the same Wi-Fi network or plug them in via USB and you'll be good to go unless I specify otherwise that's how these will work and there's a more detailed article to go with this video I'll leave the link to that in the description down below ok so the first step we're going to be looking at is something called join so join isn't a screen mirroring app it's a chrome app it runs inside your Chrome browser and what this will allow you to do is to send files to respond to SMS messages to see notifications and perhaps more interestingly to push your chrome tab to another device so for instance if you're reading something great on your desktop computer and you're enjoying it you want to go and get a bit more comfortable to carry on reading it then you can forwards that tab to your mobile device and then enjoy it on the couch or let's be honest the bog this is something I actually do quite often it's fairly convenient because you don't need to have something running in your system tray it's not resource-hungry it just runs in the background in chrome and then if you're enjoying an article you want to transfer your clipboard also then you can do so just by clicking that icon and going to the relevant option on the menu so this isn't a full Android control solution but if you want that specific functionality if you think it's something that would be handy and you don't want to always have your screen being mirrored on the side of your monitor then this is a great way to do that the next one I'm gonna be looking at is something called pushbullet pushbullet is an app that can run on multiple devices and it aims to synchronize those devices in various waise again this isn't for completely mirroring your android screen but what it can do is once again share files send messages between devices copy your clipboard respond to SMS messages unlike to join it can also view and respond to whatsapp messages that you can't see your whole history you just get the message come up and then you have the opportunity to respond quickly pushbullet is free to use if you're happy with just the most basic features but that comes with a cap on how many messages you can send of 100 per month if you want unlimited messages you're gonna have to pay a monthly recurring fee which is always a bit irritating whilst it's quite a popular option as you're going to see there's more powerful options on this list that are completely free or don't cost any more so I don't highly recommend push with it actually but it's worth mentioning because it's a popular one and it does have some functionality won't get anywhere else such as the ability to communicate with a big group and have lots of different devices added you can even follow your favorite creators and have that turn up and a kind of feed so as useful it is interesting but like I say for just controlling your Android device it's not the most powerful or interesting on this list so if you're here hoping to completely control your Android device in order to run apps on your monitor etc then you might have been left a little bit cold by those last two options in which case the first screen mirroring app on this list should be more interesting to you the only caveat to that is that this is only gonna work for Samsung aficionados so yes you've guessed that this is side sync so I'd sync is a screen mirroring app it works both over USB or over Wi-Fi and it's probably the best screen mirroring app that I've experienced so it like I say the only problem is that you need a Samsung device in order to use it unless you're going to do some hackery so side sink has two modes you can either just see your notifications and a little window or you can mirror the entire screen see your home screen interact with it with the mouse and keyboard and treat it as though there's a window on your computer that is your Android device and this works really well you can even go full screen mode and on a wired connection it's incredibly fast almost fast enough to play twitch games not quite but you can certainly play things like candy crush or Tenten and even over wired connection this is fine it's alright for media playback and on the whole it's one of the most stable and feature-rich options out there it wasn't that stable when it first came about that Samsung has been quietly upgrading it on the down-low and it's gotten better and better but if you're not a Samsung user then there are other options one of these is something called a visor so visor is an app that once again lets you move your screen it's a chrome app so you'll need to install Chrome you need to install the app through the Chrome browser it also has a desktop app so it gets a bit fiddly and it's not the best to set up once it's up and running you'll be able to control your Android device just the same as sizing and do whatever it is you want to do via your PC you can use your mouse and keyboard you can respond to whatsapp messages but it's not as fast inside sync and it's not free if you want all of the features so the free version is wired you have to pay if you want to go wireless and you can improve the speed and the frame rate and use full screen mode in the paid version as well even the free version works fine you can choose whether you'd rather have higher resolution or higher frame rate I recommend the latter like I said it's not perfect and you definitely won't be playing many games like this but if you just want something to easily respond to whatsapp messages then this is a good bet it's also not the most user-friendly it's not the most intuitive to set up it's a bit fiddly I had problems with it at first but like I say once it's up and running it works well and if you just want to be able to respond to messages go for it there plenty more screen mirroring apps out there by the way like a power mirror it's just a matter of finding which one works best for you another option is to use something called desk Talk another option is something called desk dock which is surprisingly difficult to say actually so desk dock doesn't mirror your screen but it shares your mouse and keyboard and the idea behind this is that the mouse can transition between your monitor and the Android device which presumably you'll have stood up next your computer and some kind of phone stand and that way you can quickly respond to messages you can open apps to check on things and there's even a potential application here for developers because it means that if you're testing an app you can jump between your code and the app and test that everything work for that I'm going to get up and input it all with your stubby finger the free version only allows you to share the mouse and you'll need to pay for the pro version if you also want to be a share your keyboard but the good news is this is only a one-off fee it's like five quid or something there's no recurring fee as with some of these other options there's plenty of other apps out there that'll let you share your mouse and keyboard as well one I believe is called share mouse and keyboard original name there another one's called synergy which I used to use but apparently isn't doing so well anymore but again have a look around this is another option AirDroid is like an amalgamation of a lot of these different apps in terms of the sheer number of feature so that brings to the table so you can use it to respond to SMS messages and to retrieve files and things and to copy and paste but you can also use it to mirror your screen the screen mirroring isn't the best it's not comparable with visor or side sync but if you just need to use it for a Productivity purpose in a pinch then it's perfectly serviceable it can also share the mouse and keyboard so it is like an amalgamation of all these different options it's free to use for the majority of these features including screen mirroring and sharing your mouse and keyboard but you will have to pay to remove ads and also if you want to remove a couple of restrictions such as file sizes but there's only one dollar ninety-nine a month so you can see it's considerably better value especially considering the large number of features as compared to something like pushbullet so finally I just want to throw a curveball out there you can also use Tasker to control your Android device so Tasker is an automation app lets you set up triggers as events and then response Ursula's triggers so for instance you could have it so that when you get home you turn on Wi-Fi so we can use this to control our anger device because there's lots of ways that we can communicate with Tasker via PC for instance both pushbullet and join officially support to Tasker and that means that we could make our phone react in a myriad of different ways when we send a specific text message for instance maybe giving us its location for example or making a noise so we can find it or taking a photo remotely once again like I say the only limit is your imagination so there you go that's seven different ways seven different apps that you can use to control your Android device and across those seven hopefully you've seen there's lots of different options and lots of different applications which is if for you is going to depend on your workflow and how you like to use your device but hope really something there will be handy of course if not then you can always just use it as a kind of party trick to show off to friends and say hey isn't this cool my radar for what's cool by the way is seriously out of whack so it fans really useful interesting guys if you did then please leave like please share it around that helps us immensely subscribe if you want more like this and hit the bell button for notifications leave a comment down below let us know what tools you used to control your Android device and what other videos like this you'd like to see in future and of course head over to 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