Summary

  • Windows 11 now has a new mobile connectivity feature that shows the latest photos from your Android phone as a notification on your PC. You can edit and share these photos easily on your PC.
  • The Phone Link app still exists for accessing the full gallery and other features of your Android phone, but Microsoft is decoupling some capabilities. The new feature is powered by the Cross Device Experience Host.
  • Users signed in with a Microsoft Entra ID can now join Teams meetings directly from the Start menu. This feature might not be available to general users yet, but it would be a welcome addition.

Microsoft is tightening the integration between your Windows 11 PC and your Android phone with a new feature to make it easier to share images from your phone. The company today released Windows 11 build 23619 to Insiders enrolled in the Dev channel, and with it comes with a new mobile connectivity feature that brings up the latest photos from your phone as a notification on your PC.

Edit and share photos from your phone on your PC

Screenshot of a Windows 11 notification displaying a photo taken on an Android phone

This notification will appear whenever you take a new photo or screenshot on your phone, and when you click it, you'll be taken to the Snipping Tool app, where you can crop, annotate, and make other edits to your image. You can also easily share it from here to any app on your PC, which can make it easier to share than using your phone to do it.

Interestingly, this feature isn't a part of the Phone Link app, and instead, you can manage through the Mobile devices page (formerly called Phone link) in the Settings app on Windows 11. There's a new dialog for managing mobile devices connected to your PC, and from here, you can choose whether you want your phone's photos sent to your PC automatically.

Screenshot of a WIndows 11 dialog allowing users to manage connected mobile devices

Phone Link still exists if you want to access the full gallery as well as other features of your Android phone, but it seems like Microsoft wants to decouple some capabilities from it. This new feature will be powered by the Cross Device Experience Host, an underlying service that's also updated through the Microsoft Store. This feature is actually rolling out to both the Canary and Dev channels, as Microsoft mentions.

Teams meetings in the Start menu

Screenshot of a Windows 11 Start menu with a Teams meeting in the Recommended section

Another change in this build that's somewhat notable is the ability to join Teams meetings from the Start menu. This is only available to users signed in with a Microsoft Entra ID (formerly Azure Active Directory) account , but essentially,. the Recommended section of the Start menu will now show upcoming Teams meetings so you can easily join them right away.

There's no word on this kind of feature coming to general users, though it would be a welcome addition.

Smaller fixes and known issues

While those are the only two new features in this build, there are some fixes in tow with this build. Microsoft says it has File Explorer performance when launching the tool, and it fixed an issue where you couldn't drag a Task Manager window if the mouse was on the search box. Additionally, a crash that was happening when adding new natural voices to Narrator was fixed.

Meanwhile, the list of known issues is slightly longer, so we'll leave it for you below:

If you're on the Dev channel, all you have to do to grab the latest build is check for updates in Windows Update. However, as per usual, new features are rolling out gradually, so there's no guarantee you'll get them right away.