How To Get Your Phone Notifications On Your Laptop

A recent study compiled data from over 50,000 Push Notification campaigns and 65 billion Push Notification sent to 750 million consumers worldwide. Those are staggering numbers and everyone who uses a smartphone knows how many interruptions in a day can be due to persistent app notifications. Wouldn’t it be great if you can simply get these notifications on your laptop, while you’re working, and choose to respond to only those you think are important?

We’re going to show you just that. But first, let’s understand on what platforms this is possible.

• If you own an Android phone and Windows laptop
• If you own an Android phone and a MacBook
• If you own an iPhone and a MacBook

Unfortunately, if you own an iPhone with a Windows laptop, you’re out of luck. For other scenarios, let’s get started.

Situation 1: Between an Android phone and a Windows laptop

We can break down this part into two simple scenarios. One is where you have a Windows 10 laptop with Cortana and the other is where you might still be using an older version of Windows or don’t want to use Cortana for any reason.

a. Using Cortana

Windows 10 was launched at about the same time when voice assistants were getting big and Cortana was Microsoft’s attempt at that. It works well at times and has in-built functionality to sync notifications between an Android phone and Windows 10 laptops.

To get started, download and install the Cortana app on your Android phone and sign-in with the same credentials you used for Windows sign-on. Then, navigate to the Settings menu and then tap Sync Notifications. Here, you can either enable notifications for all the apps or a select few, which are really important to you. You not only get those notifications directly on your Windows 10 machine but can also respond to them.

Please note: At the time of writing, the Cortana app is still in testing phase and may be unstable for some users.

b. Using Pushbullet

The Pushbullet Android app has been around for a long time and works rather well. Once installed on your Android phone, you can then install the full software on your Windows machine, or simply install the browser extension. This will not only allow notifications from your Android device to be shows on your Windows machine but also enables easy sharing of links and documents between your computer and phone.

Since Pushbullet is a 3rd party app to both Windows and Android, some functionality might not feel as fluid as Cortana on Windows. However, if you don’t want to use Cortana or are using an older Windows OS, then this is your best option.

Situation 2: Between an Android Phone and a MacBook

For scenarios where you own an Android phone and a MacBook, well, the situation remains quite similar to the one above. You can use an app like Pushbullet to get your notifications from your Android device to be displayed on your MacBook.

Situation 3: Between an iPhone and a MacBook

With the introduction of ‘Continuity‘, Apple made it really easy to act on notifications from your iPhone on other Apple devices. The basic setup rule is to have the same Apple ID logged into iCloud on all Apple devices.

Next, ensure Handoff is enabled on the MacBook and the iPhone. On the MacBook, go to the Apple menu -> System Preferences, then click General. Select Allow Handoff between this Mac and your iCloud devices. Similarly, on your iPhone, go to Settings -> General -> Handoff, then turn on Handoff.

Once these settings are in place, you can surely get message and call notifications on your MacBook without checking your iPhone every time. Even though WhatsApp and Telegram aren’t directly supported right now, you can get around this issue by using the web or full-fledged apps for Macs. If that doesn’t float your boat then you can always fall back on apps like Pushbullet on iOS and their Chrome extensions.

Notified yet?

Those were some pretty quick and easy ways to set up notifications for your computing devices while not being bothered to check your phone. If you have better ways than these, then do let us know. Or if you want solutions to other pressing issues, do drop us a comment.