Apple’s iOS and MacOS provide some fairly deep integration between their telephone and PC platforms. Ditto for Google’s Android and ChromeOS. But what about Microsoft, whose cell phone aspirations had been lifeless and buried years in the past? Windows has Phone Link, which is at the very least an choice for managing your calls and texts, if a considerably janky one. After a short testing period, Phone Link can now help iPhones for all Windows 11 customers.

Phone Link (and its predecessor Your Phone) had been beforehand restricted to Android units, in all probability as a result of the extra open platform is each simpler to hyperlink to and a better match to Windows by way of interoperability. But the cellular market is way more divided than laptops and desktops, and Microsoft needed to embrace iOS finally. When linked to an iPhone, the Phone Link app can present you cellular notifications in your desktop, plus make and obtain calls and use at the very least some messaging techniques.

Phone Link on iOS is a bit more restrictive than it’s on Android, as you might need guessed. First of all, you’ll want an iOS 14, and you’ll’t apply it to an iPad. Messages are additionally restricted to SMS (not Apple’s ubiquitous iMessage), and you’ll’t ship pictures or movies or take part in group chat. Oh, and if you’d like entry to the images in your telephone, you’ll must open the Windows Photos app and join it to iCloud.

The Phone Link app must be put in for all Windows 11 customers over the subsequent few weeks. If you’re in a rush, you may download it directly from the Microsoft Store.