Via the Digital Services Regulation (DSA), the European Commission has requested information from Youtube, Snapchat and Tiktok about which parameters their algorithms use to recommend social media content to users.
The Commission then wants to evaluate the extent to which these algorithms can amplify risks linked to, for example, democratic elections, mental health and children’s well-being. The authority also wants to look at how the platforms work to reduce the potential impact their recommendation systems have on the spread of illegal content, such as the promotion of drugs and incitement against ethnic groups.
The social media companies have until Nov. 15 to provide the requested information.
Most Apple watchers may have noticed that the company’s iPhone 16 marketing really does put Apple Intelligence front and center, even though its home-baked breed of AaI (Artificial [Apple] Intelligence) isn’t available quite yet.
All the same, the system, which we explain in great depth here, is on the way. And in the run up to its arrival, we’re learning more about it, and when and how it will be introduced. As we wait on data about the extent to which Apple Intelligence boosts future iPhone sales, read on to learn when Apple Intelligence will come to your nation, what schedule the various tools are shipping on, and other recently revealed details concerning Apple’s hugely hyped service.
When is Apple Intelligence coming?
Apple will introduce the first of its Apple Intelligence services with the release of iOS 18.1. More tools and services will be made available later this year and across 2025, when the company will likely introduce brand new and unannounced features. You will require an iPhone 16 series device, an iPhone 15 Pro series device, or an iPad or Mac running an M1 chip or later to run the system.
What schedule are service releases on?
A Bloomberg report tells us when to expect Apple Intelligence features to appear:
iOS 18.1:
Due in mid-October, this first set of features will include various Writing tools, phone call recording and transcription, a smart focus mode and Memories movies. Apple tells us the feature list includes:
Writing Tools.
Clean Up in Photos.
Create a Memory movie in Photos.
Natural language search in Photos.
Notification summaries.
Reduce Interruptions Focus.
Intelligent Breakthrough and Silencing in Focus.
Priority messages in Mail.
Smart Reply in Mail and Messages.
Summaries in Mail and Messages.
And Siri enhancements, including product knowledge, more resilient request handling, a new look and feel, a more natural voice, the ability to type to Siri, and more.
iOS 18.2:
In December, we should see Apple make Genmoji and Image Playground services available.
iOS 18.4:
This is when Siri will be overhauled to become more contextually aware and capable of providing more personally relevant responses. This release is thought to be coming in March and will be preceded by a more minor update (iOS 18.3).
Where will Apple Intelligence be available?
Bad news, good news. The good news is that US iPhone owners will get to use Apple Intelligence as soon as iOS 18.1 ships. The other good news is that any user anywhere willing to set their device language to US English should also be able to run the services; if you want to keep your iPhone running your language, you’ll have to wait a little while.
Apple has promised to introduce localized language support for the following English nationalities in December: Australia, Canada, New Zealand, South Africa, and the United Kingdom.
Throughout 2025, the company has promised to introduce Apple Intelligence support for English (India), English (Singapore), French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Spanish, and Vietnamese. The company also promised support for “other” languages, but hasn’t announced which ones. For the moment, at least, Apple Intelligence will not be available in the EU.
How much storage does the system need?
An Apple document confirms that Apple Intelligence requires 4GB of available iPhone storage to download, install, and use. The company hasn’t disclosed how much space is required on iPads or Macs, but it seems reasonable to expect it’s close to the same. Apple also warns that the amount of required storage could increase as new features are introduced.
What else to know
Apple now sees AI as a hugely important component to its business moving forward. That means the service will work on all future iPads, Macs, and iPhones (including iPhone SE). It also means the company is plotting a path to support the service on visionOS devices and Homepod and deploy it in future products, including an intelligent home automation and management system it apparently plans, along with the introduction (at last) of a “HomeOS.” There’s more information here.
Although OpenAI’s revenues are increasing significantly, the generative AI (genAI) pioneer remains dependent on financial injections, according to Reuters.
The maker of ChatGPT generated revenue of $300 million in September alone, sources said — an increase of 1700% compared to the beginning of 2023. And the company expects revenue to jump to $11.6 billion next year.
Nevertheless, OpenAI expects to lose around $5 billion this year despite sales of $3.7 billion.
Expenses can only be partially traced
Various factors are responsible for the high losses, reports The New York Times. This year one of the biggest increased operating costs has been increased energy consumption tied to an enormous upswing since the launch of ChatGPT at the end of 2022. The company sells subscriptions for various tools and the startup grants licenses to numerous companies for the use of large language models (LLMs) from its GPT family.
Employee salaries and office rent also have a financial impact.
AI needs more money
In order to cover existing debts and further increase growth, the genAI company has for some time been aiming for another round of financing, which should also help manage energy costs.
The latest financing round — led by Thrive Capital, a US venture capital firm that plans to invest $1 billion — brought in $6.6 billion and pushed the company’s valuation to $157 billion. At the same time, OpenAI is warning investors away from rivals like Anthropic, xAI and Safe Superintelligence (SSI), a startup launched by OpenAI co-founder Ilya Sutskever.
One reason for Apple’s change of heart could be internal turmoil caused by the board’s plans to transform OpenAI into a for-profit company. Following the announcement of those plans, there were a number of key departures at OpenAI, most notably the departure of CTO Mira Murati.
In the near term, the growth of OpenAI is likely to continue; according to analysts’ calculations, the company has now achieved a market share of 30%.
OpenAI has raised $6.6 billion from investors like Thrive Capital and Tiger Global, but the AI company also sought assurances that investors would avoid funding five competing firms, according to a Reuters report.
The competitors include Anthropic, Elon Musk’s xAI, and Safe Superintelligence (SSI), a startup launched by OpenAI co-founder Ilya Sutskever.
These companies directly compete with OpenAI in advancing large language models, a capital-intensive effort.
Additionally, OpenAI named two AI application firms — AI search startup Perplexity and enterprise search company Glean.
On Wednesday, the San Francisco-based startup announced it completed its latest funding round, reaching a $157 billion valuation — the highest in Silicon Valley’s history.
This comes after the company revealed plans to shift from its nonprofit origins to a for-profit structure amid major leadership upheavals, including the sudden departure of several top executives.
“The new funding will allow us to double down on our leadership in frontier AI research, increase compute capacity, and continue building tools that help people solve hard problems,” OpenAI said in a statement.
The investors included chipmaker Nvidia and Microsoft. Apple, which had been in discussions to invest, ultimately chose not to participate, according to Reuters.
Impact of exclusivity deal
Exclusivity agreements, while not unheard of, are relatively rare in the tech industry, particularly within the AI venture capital space, according to Thomas George, president of Cybermedia Research.
“These arrangements have traditionally been more common in fast-moving, high-stakes industries like ridesharing, where firms like Uber and Lyft sought to secure conflict-free funding during critical growth periods,” George said. However, such agreements were typically limited to defined periods, such as six or 12 months, he added.
The move could significantly reshape the venture capital landscape, potentially intensifying competition for funding among emerging AI startups and concentrating most venture capital investments around fewer, larger companies.
“OpenAI’s move could stifle innovation in the short term,” said Nitish Mittal, partner at Everest Group. “With fewer resources available, competitors might struggle to keep pace with OpenAI’s advancements. By restricting capital flow to competitors, OpenAI could consolidate more market share and talent, thus slowing down the growth of rivals.”
However, this might also incite a counter-reaction, spurring these companies to seek alternative funding sources, forge new alliances, or innovate to reduce their reliance on heavy capital, according to George.
“While this could temporarily consolidate OpenAI’s position, it also risks creating a more aggressive competitive environment, where rivals may accelerate innovation to differentiate themselves,” George said.
Possible expansion plans
These concerns become more pronounced when considering OpenAI’s plans, particularly its possible expansion of enterprise offerings.
The inclusion of AI application developers in its portfolio suggests this direction, as the company projects revenue to rise to $11.6 billion by 2025, up from $3.7 billion this year.
“To capture deeper financial engagement, OpenAI aims to accelerate the development and rollout of enterprise-grade AI systems and large language models, making it more competitive,” George said. “This strategy appears to support OpenAI in expanding its business operations and achieving high revenue expectations sooner than anticipated.”
However, there is also the possibility of heightened regulatory scrutiny. “If successful, this strategy could boost OpenAI’s market position, but it may also provoke regulatory scrutiny or push rival firms to innovate faster through alternative funding channels,” Mittal said.
Are you a robot? Google really, really wants to know.
The answer to this question is demanded of web users 200 million times a day via CAPTCHAs — “Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart,” a system owned and operated by Google.
Google wanted CAPTCHAs to test whether users were human or bots to protect websites from spam and fraud — but with a twist. Google intended to substitute the original, deliberately distorted letters (readable by people but not bots) with accidentally distorted ones — ambiguous scans from the Google Books Library Project. For example, if most users identified a blurry letter as an “E,” that would be confirmed or corrected in the digital book scan.
The vision for this project was to get the world’s web users to work for free, identifying letters while also thwarting malicious bots. Google later used reCAPTCHA for human identification of ambiguous Street View and Maps photographed objects, including home addresses, street signs, and business names and addresses. More recently, Google has used reCAPTCHA to support its broader AI initiatives across maps, computer vision, speech recognition, and security.
There are many kinds of CAPTCHAs — text-based, image-based, audio, math problems, word problems, time-based, honeypot, picture identification, and invisible. The most common ones are the click-the-checkbox CAPTCHAs and the click-the-pictures-that-contain-a-bus CAPTCHAs. Both are Google’s reCAPTCHA v2.
Google’s most recent version, reCAPTCHA v3, uses behavioral analysis to detect bots without explicit challenges. The user is never forced to stop and solve a puzzle. This approach makes sense and doesn’t divert users in their tracks to solve Google’s recognition problems.
So why do we still see the old kind of reCAPTCHA v2 challenges everywhere, every day?
One reason is that reCAPTCHA v2 is simpler for website owners to implement and manage. They can verify users without having to interpret complex risk scores. It’s also more tangible to website owners because they can see it (whereas v3 operates invisibly in the background). It also has more customizable options and uses fewer cookies.
Even website owners who use v3 implement v2 as a fallback system, either for especially suspicious traffic or when the v3 engine can’t capture enough data.
While using reCAPTCHA v2 has clear benefits, new events this month radically changed the cost-benefit analysis.
AI defeats reCAPTCHA
Researchers from ETH Zurich published a research paper Sept. 13 demonstrating that it can solve Google’s reCAPTCHA v2 with 100% accuracy.
The study reveals that current AI technologies can effectively exploit advanced image-based captchas like reCAPTCHA v2. Any malicious actor anywhere in the world can easily implement an automated bot system that gets past reCAPTCHA v2 challenges.
Humans can “prove they’re human” with 71-85% accuracy. Machines can “prove they’re human” with 100% accuracy.
Fraudulent CAPTCHA pages are shared on shady websites claiming to offer cracked versions of popular games like Black Myth: Wukong, Skylines II, and Hogwarts Legacy. The fake CAPTCHA test tricks users into performing keyboard actions that secretly paste and execute a PowerShell script that downloads and installs the Lumma Stealer malware.
The same fraudulent CAPTCHA challenges are also included in phishing emails disguised as GitHub communications about a fake “security vulnerability.”
One reason the phony CAPTCHA scam works is that CAPTCHAs are so ubiquitous. We’ve all been trained like lab rodents to engage with them, so it’s easy to convince the public to use them. The social engineering trick simply hijacks an existing widespread habit.
The ubiquity of CAPTCHAs itself is an exploitable security threat.
In the past few weeks, it’s become clear that reCAPTCHA v2 is both breakable by AI and a huge security risk. But the biggest problem with reCAPTCHA v2 has existed for years.
Unconscionable exploitation of users
I can’t stand reCAPTCHA v2 challenges. As a research-obsessed journalist, I open hundreds or thousands of web pages daily. I’ve bookmarked hundreds of pages of news searches, which I open every day to stay informed about my far-flung technical beats. I churn through web pages at high speed, hunting for information. Plus, I use a lot of browser extensions.
I’m also a digital nomad, traveling globally and constantly accessing random Wi-Fi networks in airports, cafes, restaurants, Airbnbs, and elsewhere. I often need to pretend (for some US services) to be in the United States, so of course, I use a VPN.
Each aspect of how I use the web and Google Search is deemed “suspicious,” so CAPTCHA challenges are constantly arresting my work momentum.
I’m an online speed freak. I’ve spent thousands of dollars on my laptop solely for performance. I don’t want anything slowing me down. So, for Google to stop me in my tracks and make me identify buses, stairs, and crosswalks a hundred times a day while I’m in the writing “zone” is vexing to an extreme.
The researchers note that Google might have profited as much as $888 billion from cookies created by reCAPTCHA sessions and could monetize CAPTCHA activity by tracking users, gathering behavioral data, and creating user profiles for advertising. (Google denied this charge, saying reCAPTCHA v2 user data is used only to improve the service.)
(The researchers also estimate that reCAPTCHA traffic consumed about 134 petabytes of bandwidth, which has so far burned roughly 7.5 million kWh of energy and produced 7.5 million pounds of CO2.)
Google: It’s time to pull the plug
Enough already with the CAPTCHAs that force users to stop and take a test! It’s a massive, unpaid exploitation of users for Google’s gain. The technology is easily defeated by AI. And the very existence of the CAPTCHA concept is now being exploited by malicious actors.
While reCAPTCHA v3 is probably much better, it’s now clear that reCAPTCHA v2 is beatable with AI, a security risk, and a giant pain in the ass for millions of people.
Google has killed more than 296 products since 2006, according to the Google Graveyard.
Apple has been accused of violating union rights, according to a complaint filed by the US National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) .
The complaint, filed in May by the NLRB and released Monday, accused Apple of several federal labor law violations, including “coercively interrogating employees about their union sympathies;” “confiscating union flyers from its employee break room,” and “interfering with, restraining, or coercing employees” from exercising their rights.
It’s not the first time Apple has been accused by a US labor board of trying to illegally stop efforts to unionize. In 2021, the company was accused of interrogating workers and barring them from leaving pro-union flyers in a break room in a Manhattan store.
Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the allegations.
The most recent complaint is the result of a lawsuit filed last year by Ashley Gjovik, a former Apple senior engineering manager who was “terminated” in 2021, and Cher Scarlett, who accused the company of forbidding employees from discussing wages and employment conditions.
Scarlett agreed to leave Apple and drop her NLRB complaint. Scarlett was one of the founders of the #AppleToo movement, a whistleblower group that alleged racism, sexism, and inequality at the company.
Last year, after an attempt to unionize failed at another Manhattan store, the NLRB affirmed an administrative law judge’s findings that Apple illegally interrogated workers at the store about unionization efforts and prevented them from sharing pro-union flyers. A complaint was also filed by Gjovik in a California federal court alleging Apple illegally fired, disciplined, threatened, and interrogated her for engaging in protected union activity at its headquarters in Cupertino, CA.
The NLRB complaint calls on Apple to stop the violating practices and post notices in workplaces showing agency has found it violated Federal labor law and saying Apple agrees to now obey those laws.
Apple also faces at least two other pending NLRB cases claiming it fired an employee at its headquarters for criticizing managers and illegally interfered with a union campaign at a retail store in Atlanta, according to Reuters.
The Apple product machine continues to whirr, with a host of new products, including Macs, iPads, and iPhone SE, expected to appear this fall.
Some of these new products will represent powerful improvements compared to older hardware, as the intention is to ensure Apple Intelligence runs well on all the company’s devices. That means a big jump in processor power and might also mean a bump in memory — both of which should raise the performance bar, even for those entry-level products you intend to deploy across your business.
In brief, the list of upcoming product upgrades is expected to include:
MacBook Pros with an M4 chip.
iMacs with M4 chips.
A Mac mini upgrade.
The iPhone SE, with Face ID and Apple Intelligence.
A new iPad.
A new iPad mini.
The thinking is these devices will almost certainly appear at about the time as Apple rolls out Apple Intelligence features that have been announced but aren’t yet available — particularly (for business users), the introduction of a more context-savvy Siri in 2025. That alone is likely to tempt consumers to upgrade to iPhone SE, and should also make that device a more viable tool for some roles in the mobile enterprise.
The iPhone SE is expected to ship with an A18 processor (also used in the current iPhone 16 range) and will look more like an iPhone 14, lack a Home button, and have but one rear camera. (It’s not expected to make an appearance until Spring.)
Other upgrades to Apple’s Mac range will arrive sooner, potentially this month. These are expected to include M4/M4 Pro processors and at least 16GB of RAM in the MacBook Pro; a new M4-based iMac; and a redesigned M4-powered Mac mini with five USB-C ports. The other significant take away in the move to M4 chips is that it will place Macs far ahead of competitors when it comes to computational performance per watt, which is a very important consideration when thinking about AI.
A quick run-down of current Mac speculation:
MacBook Pro: 14- and 16-in. models, M4/M4 Pro/M4 Max chip, 16+GB RAM, 10-core CPU and GPU, three Thunderbolt 4 ports.
Mac mini: Smaller than the current model, M4 or M4 Pro chip, no USB-A ports, five USB-C ports, an HDMI port, and perhaps an internal power supply.
iMac: No major design changes in the 24-in. all-in-one, and M4 processors.
Those Mac upgrades could be accompanied by new iterations of the iPad and iPad mini, both equipped with A18 processors capable of handling Apple Intelligence. For many enterprise users, the iPad mini upgrade may seem attractive.
Current iPad expectation:
iPad mini: Big feature upgrades include Apple Pencil support and updated front and rear cameras, A18 chip, Wi-Fi 6E, Bluetooth 5.3.
iPad (11th generation): A18 chip, new color options.
Apple watchers envision Apple Pencil support and a landscape front camera, which makes the iPad mini a good fit for deployment in stock control, field operations, industry, warehousing, and in-store ordering. Larger than an iPhone while remaining eminently portable, iPad mini could become a highly utilitarian device for many users. It seems likely to use an A18 chip and both new iPads will support Apple Intelligence.
Not all of the devices Apple is expected to introduce will be available immediately. The new iPad, for example, might ship a little later.
Intelligent Apple
What’s interesting here is that Apple has been criticized for emblazoning much of its in-store iPhone 16 advertising with Apple Intelligence, despite those features not yet being available. That’s a fair criticism to some extent, but what it misses is that Apple Intelligence itself should be seen as its own new product family. New features will be added over time, not just those that Apple has already introduced.
Within that context, it seems wise to anticipate an ever-expanding array of features will be made available, even as developers begin to deploy Apple Intelligence APIs within their own software, further expanding what is available to consumer and enterprise users.
The company’s move to ensure that all its platforms (allegedly in the future also including HomePod, Apple Watch, and Vision Pro) support Apple Intelligence speak to the strategic importance Apple now attaches to building the world’s most private and secure ecosystem for person-centered AI.
Click to Do places an interactive overlay on a PC’s desktop screen and provides suggested actions for ways to interact with text and images. This could mean running a “visual search” of an image in Microsoft’s Bing search engine, for instance, or summarizing selected text on a webpage.
“Click to Do works by first understanding everything you’ve seen on your screen, then enabling useful shortcuts to actions that help you more quickly search, learn, edit, shop, or act on those items,” Yusuf Mehdi, Microsoft’s corporate vice president and consumer chief marketing officer, explained in a pre-recorded press briefing ahead of the announcement. “It works on any window, document, image or even video.”
Click to Do will be available in preview for Windows Insider members in November.
It’s one of several Windows features developed specifically for Copilot+ PCs sold by Microsoft and OEM partners. The “AI PCs” feature a neural processing unit (NPU) that runs AI workloads more effectively on-device.
Microsoft also provided more details on plans to make another flagship Copilot+ feature — its controversial Recall timeline search tool — available to Windows Insiders this month. This will start with Copilot+ PCs running on Qualcomm’s Snapdragon chips, with access expanded to Intel- and AMD-powered devices in November.
Announced in May, the launch of Recall was subsequently delayed in response to data privacy and security concerns. Microsoft has since made changes to Recall in response to the backlash; the company outlined those changes last week, and noted the feature will now be turned off by default.
There’s no word yet on when Recall will be made generally available, however, with Microsoft saying only that more details will be shared “soon.”
Another feature announced on Tuesday for Copilot+ PC owners is improved Windows Search. This lets users describe what they’re looking for — such as the contents of photos — without needing to remember an actual file name or get the spelling right. The improved search, which can be performed offline thanks to the Copilot+ NPUs, will be available first with File Explorer before coming to Windows Search and Settings in the coming months, Microsoft said.
Improved Windows Search allows users to describe what they’re looking for rather than having to find a specific file.
Microsoft
The Windows Search feature “could be a real boon to users,” said Tom Mainelli, IDC’s group vice president for device and consumer research.
“We all spend an inordinate amount of time either filing things so we can find them later or searching for things that we failed to file well,” he said. “This new search feature, as demonstrated, makes it much easier to find what you need quickly so you can stay in the flow of your work.”
There are also new AI features coming to two Windows apps, Paint and Photos.
In Photos, the super resolution tool lets users enhance low quality images, upscaling photos to 4K resolution in seconds.
Coming to Paint are two editing tools — generative fill and erase. “Using an adjustable brush, you can remove unwanted or distracting elements in your image or add new ones, exactly where you want them,” Pavan Davuluri, Microsoft’s corporate vice president for Windows and devices, said in a blog post. “We’ve also improved the underlying diffusion-based model to deliver better results faster, and with built-in moderation, it’s a creative experience you can trust.”
The new Copilot+ features are unlikely to prompt the average consumer or IT decision-maker to rush out and buy a new PC, said Mainelli. The aging PC installed base is more of a driving factor, with many commercial customers still relying on Windows 10 devices acquired four or more years ago. “Windows 10 EOS is in October 2025, so many companies are moving toward a refresh,” he said.
But for those planning an upgrade, the additional capabilties make Copilot+ devices more compelling. “These new features could make buyers who are already contemplating new PC purchases consider moving up the stack to buy a Copilot+ PC,” said Mainelli.
“These new AI features also position Microsoft and Windows to keep existing users from defecting to Apple and the Mac, which will see the rollout of Apple Intelligence in the coming weeks and months.”
Microsoft also announced the rollout of the Windows 11 24H2 update to customers on Tuesday. This version includes features such as Energy Saver, designed to reduce energy use and extend battery life; enhancements to hearing aid support with Bluetooth LE Audio such as audio preset controls and ambient sounds; and Wi-Fi 7 compatibility.
We live in a multi-device world. At a minimum, you almost certainly have both a computer and a phone — and potentially many more devices than that!
And when it comes to transferring files between your Windows PC and whatever phone you’re using, you’re absolutely spoiled for choice. Microsoft, Google, and Apple have all developed their own ways to send files back and forth between a phone and computer, and you might not even need any of those systems to get the job done.
The real question is just which method makes the most sense for you. I’ll walk you through the best options so you can figure that out and be as productive as possible on both your phone — be it an Android device or an iPhone — and your PC.
Want more PC advice? My free Windows Intelligence newsletter delivers all the best Windows tips straight to your inbox. Plus, you’ll get free copies of Paul Thurrott’s Windows 11 and Windows 10 Field Guides (a $10 value) just for subscribing!
Windows-to-phone file transfer option #1: Cloud storage
For most people and situations, cloud file storage is generally the best way to access files across multiple devices. It’s also a great way to back things up, in a sense. Your files aren’t just stored on one device, so you’ll always have a copy if your computer dies.
You can of course use Microsoft OneDrive, Google Drive, or Apple’s iCloud Drive to store files on cloud servers and easily access them on your devices. They’re all cross-platform — although iCloud Drive is only available for Windows PCs and Apple devices. Apple’s software isn’t a great option if you use an Android phone — no surprise there — though it does work well on Windows PCs, which is a pleasant twist.
While cloud file storage has become more common, many users still store files locally, especially on PCs. If you don’t trust these services and want more privacy, I recommend looking at encrypted cloud storage tools. For example, you might try Proton Drive or another encrypted cloud storage app.
Windows-to-phone file transfer option #2: Automatic photo uploads
Many cloud photo storage services — including Google Photos, Microsoft OneDrive, and Apple’s iCloud Photos — can automatically upload photos as you take them on your phone. No matter what other Windows-to-phone file transfer methods you’re using, taking advantage of this option can be a great way to quickly access camera-captured images on your PC.
For example, if you use OneDrive, you’ll find photos you’ve taken on your phone in File Explorer under the “Gallery” view at the top-left corner of the File Explorer window on Windows 11. If you use iCloud Photos with an iPhone, you can activate iCloud Photo integration in the Windows Photos app on both Windows 10 and 11.
Google Photos doesn’t integrate well with Windows anymore — you can’t see your Google Photos in either File Explorer or the Photos app — but you can access your photos on the Google Photos website or install the OneDrive app on your Android phone and set up automatic photo uploads to OneDrive.
The Gallery view is the quickest way to find synced photos from your phone — if they’re in OneDrive.
Chris Hoffman, IDG
Windows-to-phone file transfer option #3: Phone Link (Android only)
Microsoft includes a “Phone Link” app with both Windows 10 and 10 PCs. It provides a central location for many PC-to-phone features, including texting from your PC and accessing its notifications. It works best with Android phones — Apple won’t let Microsoft integrate with iPhones in such a deep way.
If you have an Android phone, though, the Phone Link app gives you a quick and wireless way to access the entire photo library on your phone. On some Android devices — including Samsung Galaxy phones, but not Google Pixel phones — you can even drag-and-drop files to this window to transfer them. If you have an iPhone, you’ll find at least some useful features, too — such as texting from your PC — but not file or photo transfers.
You can also use the Intel Unison app, which works similarly and is a good alternative to the Phone Link app. I’ve heard from some readers of my free Windows Intelligence newsletter who find this app works more reliably with their PC and phone. (Although Intel makes the app, I’ve actually used it on an AMD-powered PC.) It’s worth a try if you’re interested in this type of app, but experience some sort of issue or compatibility challenge with Phone Link.
The Phone Link app works better for access to your photo library than your files.
Chris Hoffman, IDG
Windows-to-phone file transfer option #4: Quick Share (Android only)
If you have an Android phone and a Windows PC, you can make your Windows PC play nicely with Google’s built-in Android Quick Share feature — whether you’re using a Pixel phone, a Galaxy phone, or any other type of Android device. Just install Google’s Quick Share app for Windows and set it up. With a few clicks, your PC will appear as a “Quick Share” target for fast and easy sharing from your phone. You can use the Quick Share app in Windows to send files from your PC to your Android phone, too. It all happens wirelessly.
Windows PCs also have their own built-in “Nearby Sharing” feature, but it only works between multiple Windows PCs — both Windows 10 and Windows 11 — but not, strangely enough, any Android or iOS devices.
Google’s Quick Share app is a quick-and-convenient way to make Windows work with Android’s built-in wireless file-sharing system.
Chris Hoffman, IDG
Windows-to-phone file transfer option #5: iTunes File Sharing (iPhone only)
While Google’s Quick Share won’t work with iPhones, Apple does offer a wireless file transfer feature that works between Windows PCs and iPhones.
The File Sharing feature is built into the iTunes app, which you can install on Windows PCs. You can pair your iPhone with your PC via a USB cable or wirelessly. Then, you can use File Sharing in iTunes to transfer files.
Windows-to-phone file transfer option #6: The USB cable
Sometimes, the old ways are the most convenient. Despite rumors of the iPhone or other phones potentially dropping their charging ports, modern smartphones do still have physical ports. And they’re not just for charging; they work for Android file transfers, too.
Once you’ve made that connection, your phone — Android or iPhone — will appear as a device in the Windows File Explorer app. (You might have to unlock your phone or enable file transfers first.) You can then move files as you would with any other storage device.
Windows-to-phone file transfer option #7: Cross-platform tools
Want to use a cross-platform tool that quickly sends files over the network with very little setup? Try LocalSend. It’s a free, open-source tool for Windows, Android, iPhone, and a variety of other platforms, including macOS and Linux. After installation, with a few clicks or taps, you can send files back and forth between devices — all over the local network, with no cloud servers involved.
If you’d like a web-based alternative that doesn’t require an app installation, try Snapdrop. Assuming your computer and phone are on the same local network, they’ll be able to see each other and transfer files. Again, this works entirely over the local network — and you don’t need to install anything.
Windows-to-phone file transfer option #8: The USB-C drive (seriously!)
While USB drives don’t get the love they used to, they’re actually more useful than ever — especially if both your PC and your Android phone or iPhone all have USB-C ports.
Yes, you can get USB drives that plug into both the USB-C port on your laptop and the USB-C port on your phone. Then you can move files back and forth the old-fashioned way — using the File Explorer app on your computer and a Files app on your phone. This works for both Android phones and iPhones.
The workplace file-transfer asterisk
If you’re using a computer for work, your employer likely has a preferred way for you to access files and might not appreciate you moving your own copies around between your devices, so take care when accessing sensitive corporate data.
Be sure to follow your employer’s policies and consider whether you should be accessing any business files on a shared data server rather than moving them back and forth between devices yourself.
But take it from someone who’s tried connecting to Windows file shares from an Android phone: I recommend the above options, which are much easier to set up and use.
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Did you ever watch the early 2000s TV series Scrubs?
The show revolved around a young doctor named JD who always meant well but often got lost in his own head and ended up making ill-advised decisions. In one episode, he started seeing a fantastical opera singer who’d show up over his shoulder and sing an emphatic “MISTAAAAAKE!!!” every time he did something dumb.
This week, as I’m chewing over a colossal incoming ChromeOS pivot and the confounding logic behind it, I can’t help but hear that same operatic refrain sounding in my head — over the shoulder of Google itself, who like JD, generally seems to mean well but frequently gets in its own way.
Join me in a quick preemptive sigh, and let me explain.
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The Google-scented command center at ChromeOS’s core
First, we need just a teensy bit of super-specific context to set the stage here.
Since its start, y’see, Google’s ChromeOS platform has been deliberately different from the standard desktop computing setup.
We could spend days discussing the many ways Chromebooks aren’t like most computers. But if you’re here and reading this column, you’re probably well aware of all that stuff. (If you aren’t, here’s a primer you can catch up with on your own.)
For the purposes of the pivot we’re probing today, the part of the ChromeOS experience that’s relevant is the button that’s lived in place of the standard Caps Lock keyboard key since the very first Chromebook computer — even before it was called a Chromebook — and that’s the Search button, also known as the Launcher or Everything key.
From the get-go, Google wanted to emphasize that Chromebooks were all about making it easy to find what you needed (y’know, as Google has traditionally been known to do), and it wanted to drive home the point that these funky new computers were all about cutting away the fat and eliminating the long-accepted elements of computing that no one actually still wanted in our modern-day world.
So, away went the Caps Lock key and in its place grew that simple-seeming Search button. Initially, that button pulled up a pretty basic web-based search prompt, but over time, it expanded to become an all-in-one app-launching, answer-finding mecca — kind of like an even more capable and effective version of what Microsoft’s Windows-key-connected Start menu strives to be.
As a result, the Search key became at least occasionally known as the Launcher key at some point along the way. And then, in 2020, Google made its boldest move yet: It brought Google Assistant into that same arena and rebranded the Search/Launcher key as the Everything Button — a single streamlined spot for finding or doing practically anything.
With its new powers coming into play, that button … could almost be described as a “Google Button.” Tap it, and in the one box that comes up, you can:
Search the web
Search your local computer storage
Search your Drive file storage
Search for documents, spreadsheets, and presentations in your web-based Docs, Sheets, and Slides collections
Search for a system-level setting that you want to modify
Search for an app to run on your own device — no matter what type of app it is — or search for a new app to install from the Google Play Store
Perform any imaginable action via the Google Assistant
And, critically:
[The addition of Assistant] makes the idea of this “Everything Button” — the “Google Button” — feel powerful and complete. Quite honestly, it’s something you resent not having when you work on ChromeOS and then go back to a more traditional operating system environment. …
ChromeOS is on the brink of becoming the place where Google’s best capabilities come together to form a whole new kind of connected experience. It’s an exciting new start for intelligent desktop computing — and beyond that, it shows us the type of thoroughly connected Google experience Android could, should, and hopefully one day will also provide.
That brings us to today and the head-scratching move Google just made — one that seems poised to bring an outsized shake-up to ChromeOS’s core and the very notion of what the platform represents.
ChromeOS and the end of the Everything era
So here it is: Google’s pulling that long-standing, distinctive Search/Launcher/Everything key from the most prominent spot on the Chromebook’s keyboard and putting a new “Quick Insert” key into its place.
In the same Caps-Lock-associated stall will now reside a function that feels mostly like an excuse to cram more Gemini-branded generative-AI gobbledygook into everyone’s faces and try to convince us that it’s, like, totally The Future™ and something we should be leaning on every hour of every day.
To its credit, Google at least isn’t turning the button into a full-fledged Gemini button. Instead, it’s making it a multifaceted source for inserting different types of content into text fields throughout the ChromeOS environment. That means you can use it to call up emojis, GIFs, files, and photos — and, of course, to summon Gemini’s Help Me Write system for generating text of questionable quality and soon also Gemini’s AI image generating system, too. But it seems pretty clear that those last two factors are the driving cause for this genesis.
The once-prominent Everything Button, meanwhile, is being demoted down to a smaller “G”-branded key off to the side of the spacebar — a shift that’ll start with the newly announced Samsung Galaxy Chromebook Plus and then seemingly show up on other new ChromeOS devices from there.
As my Windows-Intelligence-writing colleague Chris Hoffman put it, this feels like the equivalent of Microsoft replacing the Windows key with a button dedicated to its Copilot AI assistant. Suffice it to say, that’d be a move most Windows-preferring persons wouldn’t exactly celebrate.
For ChromeOS, the comparison might be even more extreme — because that Everything Button really was both a representation of the platform’s very philosophy and a hugely important practical advantage only Google-centric software could provide. And while the function itself isn’t going away entirely, moving it out of that prime position seems like a silly and shortsighted move that’s bound to backfire.
On the most surface level, people who use Chromebooks are gonna be pretty miffed when their next device has a different button in the place they’ve been trained for years to tap for — well, everything. That’s a lot of muscle memory to ask folks to change, especially for the purpose of swapping in a function they likely don’t want or need in such a prominent position. (Again, imagine if Microsoft did this with the Start button.)
But perhaps more troubling yet, on a philosophical level, this speaks volumes about Google’s changing priorities for the ChromeOS experience — along with the experience around most of its products and services.
And, on that level, maybe this move shouldn’t seem like such a surprise.
And while Google itself hasn’t shared specific stats around Gemini’s adoption or its continued level of use by folks who try it, more and more signs suggest regular ol’ individual users and businesses alike are growing increasingly skeptical of the value this type of technology has to offer.
And yet — well, the gauntlet’s clearly been thrown down here. Google, like so many other tech companies, has gone all in on this stuff as the key to its future. And it’s determined to make us start using it and start seeing the value of things like “creative brainstorming” with its fact-challenged AI bot, information retrieving from a type of technology that can’t tell fact from fiction, and other such tasks most of us don’t see as being part of our daily workflow. It’s determined to make Chromebooks the devices for using all that Google AI glitz instead of the devices for getting actual work — the types of real-world, productivity-oriented work most of us are doing — done effectively.
Now, let’s level with each other: If this new “Quick Insert” key had come into existence alongside the spacebar — taking the spot of the dedicated (and already redundant, plus seemingly soon-to-be irrelevant) Assistant key on certain devices — it wouldn’t have seemed like such a facepalm-inducing problem, even if it might have been a mildly irksome addition.
But having it take over that prime placement — one so closely associated with ChromeOS’s identity and arguably its most important function — while having that Everything Button bump down to a much less prominent spot? That, in particular, is what makes this feel like such an ill-advised decision. It makes it feel like something people who actually use Chromebooks are gonna resent and find incredibly annoying. And it makes it feel like something Google itself might ultimately end up backtracking on another few years down the road.
More than anything, it makes it feel like something that should cause a fantastical opera singer to show up over Google’s shoulder and sing an emphatic “MISTAAAAAAAAAAKE!”
For now, though, all we can do is sigh — and hang onto the Chromebooks we already own, without this change in place, for as long as they stay supported.
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