Announcing Microsoft Edge for iOS and Android, Microsoft Launcher
You’re standing in line at a coffee shop. Your right thumb is stre-t-ch-ing to drag out words on your phone’s keyboard while you squint to read the text on the web form you’re filling out. It’s amazing what’s possible today—but don’t you wish your phone could magically send that task to your Windows 10 PC where you could luxuriate in a big screen and hardware keyboard?
With the new preview apps we’re launching for iOS and Android – you can. Introducing Microsoft Edge for iOS/Android and Microsoft Launcher for Android, two apps designed to make it easy to move what you’re working on between your phone and PC.
We are excited to continue the work we announced at Build to make Windows 10 PCs work great with your phone. Microsoft Edge for iOS is available starting today in preview, with Microsoft Edge for Android available soon in preview. And, Microsoft Launcher is available starting today in preview as well. Continue on PC functionality in both apps comes with the Windows 10 Fall Creators Update.
Microsoft Edge for iOS and Android
One of the most common requests we hear from people who use Microsoft Edge on Windows 10 PCs is “we want our browser experience to move to our phones”. You spoke, we listened.
Microsoft Edge for iOS and Android brings familiar features like your Favorites, Reading List, New Tab Page and Reading View across your PC and phone, so, no matter the device, your browsing goes with you. But what makes Microsoft Edge really stand out is the ability to continue on your PC, which enables you to immediately open the page you’re looking at right on your PC—or save it to work on later.
Beginning today, iOS users can test the preview app via Apple TestFlight, and Android users can sign up to be one of the first to test the preview app which will be available soon. Go here to sign up to test the Microsoft Edge for iOS and Android preview apps.
A few more details about the preview: Initially Microsoft Edge for iOS and Android will launch only in US-English, but we’ll ramp to other countries/languages as we expand the preview. And some features—like roaming passwords and support for iPads/Android tablets—aren’t available at preview launch but will come in the future.
Microsoft Launcher for Android
Android phones have a feature that iPhones don’t – they allow customization of the “launcher” that’s displayed when you push the phone’s home button. How nice! Today, we are also launching a preview release of our new Microsoft Launcher for Android. We think it’s the most beautiful (based on Fluent design), customizable, powerful launcher available. With Microsoft Launcher, your recent photos, documents and more can all Continue on PC as well.
And – just like on Windows 10 – with Microsoft Launcher you can put icons of your favorite people right on the home screen so they’re quickly and easily available.
- The Feed: Info at your Fingertips. With just a quick swipe-to-the-right, Microsoft Launcher offers a tailored feed of your important events, top news, recent activities, favorite people and most frequently used apps.
- Beautiful and customizable. Launcher has wide-ranging ways to let you personalize your phone, it’s easy to set colors of backgrounds—and our new ‘gesture’ support will let even hard-core customizers create the environment that makes them most productive.
- Continue on PC. And of course, Microsoft Launcher has been designed to make it easy for you to seamlessly continue what you’re working on – whether it’s photos, documents and more—on your PC.
Microsoft Launcher represents the “graduation” of the 4.6-star rated “Arrow Launcher” project that was developed in our Garage – we’re making a big update to Arrow and changing its name. Everyone on the Arrow Launcher beta will automatically get the Microsoft Launcher today, and any other Android users can join the preview of Microsoft Launcher beginning today as well.
Go here to access the Microsoft Launcher preview.
We hope Windows Insiders will try these preview apps alongside their Windows 10 PCs and provide feedback and ways to make them even better. As has been our approach with Windows 10, we’ll continue to try new things, learn and build the best experiences possible. We look forward to bringing these experiences more broadly to you later this year.
Source: Announcing Microsoft Edge for iOS and Android, Microsoft Launcher
