Almost everyone, especially employees and students, now use multiple devices such as phones, tablets and PCs. While doing something related to our personal or professional lives, we may need to share files between these devices. However, when we go beyond the devices included in an ecosystem of a brand such as Apple, and when we use devices with different brands and systems, this task that should be simple turns into a time-consuming task.
There are applications and methods that help with this need to make file sharing more practical. The methods introduced on this site before, such as file transfer over Wi-Fi, connecting from computer to phone using a browser, are really fast and practical methods. In addition, old methods such as Bluetooth still exist. In addition to existing methods, new applications are developed to expand the scope of existing ones.
The application I will talk about in this article is not new, but it is an application called Nearby Share, developed by Google, which has recently expanded its scope to include Windows PCs.
The application, which was made available with Android 6, is now available on Windows PCs with its beta version. It can be downloaded and installed from the link below for computers with Intel or AMD processors using 64-bit Windows 10 or 11 with Bluetooth and Wi-Fi features.
After downloading the application from the link and completing the installation, the first thing we need to do is signing in with our Google account. At this stage, it is important to sign in with the Google account that we use on our Android phones. This is because the Google account is based on effortless sharing between our devices, and if we only want to share with certain people, we can choose from the people registered in the Google account.
After signing in, we will set up the sharing settings. We can set who we want to see our Windows PC, under what name, and where the files we receive will be stored.
When we send a file from the computer to the phone, we open the context menu above the file and select the option ‘Send with nearby sharing’. The app adds this option to both the new context menu in Windows 11 and the standard context menu. Although it would sound better if the option just contained the name of the app, it’s better to have it this way so that it doesn’t interfere with Near Sharing in Windows.
Once selected, a window opens where we can select the destination that we want to send the file to. Visible devices are listed here. In order for the device to appear in the list, visibility must be enabled in the Sharing with Nearby application settings.
To send files from the phone to the computer, after selecting the Share with Nearby application from the Share menu, our computer will appear with the name we specified after installing the application.
In both scenarios, when we select a device with our Google Account open, the file is sent without confirmation and saved in the Downloads location. When we try to send it to another device, a confirmation window appears asking if we want to accept sharing on that device. If both devices are connected to the same Wi-Fi network, file transfer can be very fast.
To configure Nearby Sharing settings on an Android phone, go to Settings, Google, Devices and Sharing, Nearby Sharing. Although these options apply to the Samsung phone, you can follow a similar path on other devices.
I started using this application as soon as it was announced as beta and have found it very useful. I hope you’ll find it useful too.
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