- Windows 11 has a Resume feature in test builds
- For now it’s just for Spotify, but more developers will get on board in time
- If you’re listening to a track on your Android phone, you can resume that playback on your Windows 11 PC seamlessly
Windows 11 is getting a new ability whereby the desktop operating system will allow you to resume what you were previously doing in an app on your Android phone.
This is only available in testing for now – in Windows 11 preview builds in the Dev and Beta channels – and while it will eventually come to a range of apps, to begin with it only works with Spotify.
As Microsoft explains in a blog post, the way the feature works is as follows: say you’re listening to a playlist or podcast on Spotify on your smartphone, and you stop it, then head to your desktop PC.
When you fire up Windows 11, you’ll see a ‘Resume alert’ pop up from your taskbar at the bottom of the screen, letting you know that you can continue your Spotify listening on the PC. Just click on that alert, and the Spotify app will be opened, continuing playback exactly where you left off on your Android smartphone.
Microsoft reminds us that we’ll need to have the Spotify app installed on the PC and be logged into the same account as the one running on the smartphone, as you’d expect. If you haven’t got Spotify installed in Windows 11, a button to install the software from the Microsoft Store will pop up – then you just have to log in to your Spotify account.
Also, you must have the Link to Windows app running on your smartphone, and have access to your mobile enabled on your Windows 11 PC, as per Microsoft’s instructions in its blog post.
Analysis: A great addition – but Microsoft’s really taken its time
This is essentially Microsoft’s take on Apple’s Handoff feature, and it looks to be a streamlined and useful ability that I’m keen to see debut on Windows 11. Its revelation is no surprise, though, seeing as Microsoft accidentally gave us a glimpse of the functionality in a pre-recorded Build session earlier this year, the video of which was swiftly edited to remove this. It worked pretty much exactly the same as we see in testing now (with Spotify also being used in this early demo).
The technical name for this trick is Cross Device Resume and hopefully a number of software developers will be getting on board with bringing in support for this – those who have apps available on both Windows 11 and Android, of course. Microsoft will doubtless be prodding some of the bigger names out there, and besides Spotify we’ve also heard that WhatsApp might be in line for this treatment.
Clearly, the Resume feature is going to try to push installations from the Microsoft Store as well, which won’t hurt traffic there – something the company has been working on improving of late.
While resuming Android apps on Windows 11 is clearly a great feature, and one that it’s good to see inbound, the main question here is why has it taken so long for Microsoft to implement this?
