Microsoft’s Continue On PC Feature Is The Future Of Windows, But Needs To Be Better

Microsoft's Continue on PC feature, which introduces a Sharing option on Android devices that allows you to open web pages from your phone on your PC, is a reluctant acknowledgment of the first mobile world we live in, but to live up to it of its potential needs to be much better.

The feature is currently offered in two ways: one as an action contract as in the previous image, which is offered when a URL is available for sharing in multiple applications, including Chrome and web control on Android.

Microsoft's Continue on PC feature, which introduces a Sharing option on Android devices that allows you to open web pages from your phone on your PC, is a reluctant acknowledgment of the first mobile world we live in, but to live up to it of its potential needs to be much better.

The feature is currently offered in two ways: one as an action contract as in the previous image, which is offered when a URL is available for sharing in multiple applications, including Chrome and web control on Android.

However, it is also available in the integrated web browser on Cortana on Android, where the icon (above) is much more prominent.

There it works as in the gallery below:

Users can view a story, click on the icon, they will be offered the option to continue now or continue later, and if you choose now and Edge is open the article will open a few seconds later.

If you decide to continue later, the URL will appear in your Action Center as a notification, which you can click to open the article in Edge.

The idea is relatively good, but there are some problems with implementation. Continue Later seems to be very problematic today, since clicking the notification often does not open the article in Edge. Second, the process is somewhat slow, due to the search for its devices bit, which takes a few seconds. Microsoft should do this in the background and cache the result, so the function works instantly, which will probably promote the use.

Third, of course, there is the persistent complaint that sharing is only for Edge on the desktop, which is not used by 95% of desktop users. Microsoft could easily deploy it as a Chrome feature by simply opening your default browser instead of your preferred browser. If Microsoft insists on using Edge, at least the browser should have a dedicated sidebar for shared URLs, especially Continue Later.

The biggest problem for me, however, is that the feature is not ubiquitous among Microsoft's Android applications. The recently updated Bing application from Microsoft does not include the featured Continue button on the PC, for example, and Microsoft Office applications on Android do not even support the Android Stock Contract. Microsoft should make this a default feature of all your Android applications if you want to weave a PC workflow in the first mobile world.

This, of course, also means that there must be a reciprocal Continue on phone function, but that's a debate for another day.