If you're anything like me, you somehow have more than twice as many devices in your house as people. There are a rising number of ways to connect these devices, including the best ways to connect your iOS device to Windows 10 or your Android device to Windows 10. But if you're still rocking Windows 10 Mobile, Connected Devices can help you out.
The app is available for free on Windows 10, Windows 10 Mobile, Xbox One, and HoloLens. It's worth noting that while the Xbox One seems to be technically supported in that it shows up as a device for the app when your phone or PC is looking for device, I couldn't get it working in my testing.
Text here, paste there
Connected Devices has a couple features that I couldn't get working, but one that does work, and works well, is the ability to send text from one Windows device to the clipboard of another, PC or Windows phone. This makes it easy to grab some content from one device and ship it over to your phone or PC.
The app finds any devices that are on the same wireless network. It does this automatically, though to receive the text that I sent from my PC I also needed to have the app downloaded on my phone. The interface of the app is simple enough to use, and it's very attractive in my opinion. It utilizes transparency well and doesn't add bloat or fluff. The layout and idea behind Connected Devices is great, and the sending of text works well, but there are some big issues with it.
Serious issues
Unfortunately, Connected Devices seems to have had many of its core features broken, apparently in an update. It used to be able to open links from one device on another and allow you to send files. The app still advertises these features but at least in my testing, they didn't work at all. I tried to use Connected Devices with multiple Windows 10 Mobile devices but had no luck with most of its features. The app does say that firewalls and network issus could be the reason it didn't work but I couldn't get it working and many have commented that they ran into similar issues. If you have a different experience, please let me know in the comments.
This is a major knock on the app, completely eliminating huge parts of its core functionality. It basically reduces Connected Devices to an app for sending text to other Windows devices' clipboards, which just isn't all that useful. The app used to be able to do more and lists features that are broken, and that's disappointing. Hopefully, these can be restored in the future.
Overall thoughts
I can't recommend Connected Devices as an app for sending files between devices or opening links on another device, but in my opinion, it's still worth downloading if you just need a way to send text quickly to the clipboard of your phone or PC. There are other apps that can do this, such as Roamit, but it's always good to have multiple options.
If Connected Devices is fixed, or if it's determined that my failed tests were specific to my devices or network, it will be worth revisiting. The design of the app is very attractive and the potential feature set is great. I just hope the developers can sort out the bugs and get it back to full speed.
Pros:
- Attractive design.
- Lets you send text from one device to another device's clipboard.
- Free.
Cons:
- Many broken features.
