Microsoft and Dell are doing great work with their Your Phone and Dell Mobile Connect apps in the Windows ecosystem. Taking a leaf out of the same book, Google is also developing Phone Hub for Chromebooks which will act as a deeply integrated bridge between an Android smartphone and a Chromebook. The effort is to streamline the smartphone-desktop experience on Chromebooks. Basically, from now on, you will not need Pushbullet or its alternatives to manage your smartphone on a Chromebook. So on that note, let’s go ahead and learn how to enable Phone Hub on Chromebooks right now.
Before we begin, let me clarify that you don’t need to move to either Beta or Dev channel to get a taste of Phone Hub on Chromebook. Just make sure you are on the latest Chrome OS 89 (or higher) stable channel and you are good to go. Apart from that, to use Phone Hub, you need an Android smartphone. iOS compatibility is not on the roadmap yet. Finally, you need to log in with the same Google account on both your smartphone and Chromebook.
- Finally, you will be taken to the setup page where you can add your Android device that will be synced with the Chromebook. As you can see, you will get smartphone notifications on your Chromebook and you can perform operations like enabling the hotspot, installing apps remotely, finding your phone, and more. Simply select your device from the drop-down menu and click on “Accept and Continue”.
Receive Smartphone Notifications With Phone Hub on Chromebook
So that is how you can enable Phone Hub on Chromebooks, no matter which channel you are currently enrolled into. As I mentioned above, I am on Chrome OS 89 stable channel, and still, Phone Hub is working for me. It seems Google has broadened the A/B testing to more users, and that’s really good.
