Microsoft has released its Photos Companion app for Android and iOS, which integrates with the Photos app in Windows 10.

Photos Companion is a Microsoft Garage project, meaning that you might not want to get too attached to it: Microsoft has a history of quietly abandoning Garage projects that don’t pan out or step on the toes of its more formal software projects. But it’s an interesting idea, even for those who are already backing up photos to the cloud: It lets you transfer photos and videos from a phone to a Windows 10 PC, assuming they’re both on the same Wi-Fi network.

“The app supports direct wireless transfer between any phone or mobile device and the Photos app on any Windows 10 PC,” Microsoft explains. “This enables [users] to transfer media to their own computers … without worrying about network speeds or mobile data charges.”

The Photos Companion was originally created for the education market, but it could obviously be of interest to a much broader audience than that. And if you are using the Photos app on Windows 10 and want to take advantage of its rich new photo editing and video creation capabilities, this looks like a great way to get at your phone-based content. So it’s worth checking out.

You can download Photos Companion for Android from the Google Play Store

You can download Photos Companion for iOS from the Apple App Store

Tagged with Digital photos