Every Samsung user needs this

Earlier this year, I completed my Samsung ecosystem with a Galaxy Book 4 Edge — and one of the things I loved most about the experience was the features Samsung had added on top of Windows 11. Specifically, all of the deep integrations it offered with my Samsung phone.

Having tested this new version of Galaxy Connect myself, I couldn’t be happier with it.

Once you’ve downloaded Galaxy Connect onto your PC, you’ll see four features contained within: Continue on other devices, Storage Share, Multi Control, and Second Screen. The first two are included with the initial Galaxy Connect download, whereas Multi Control and Second Screen require additional downloads to use.

Of the features Galaxy Connect brings to Windows, Multi Control and Second Screen are by far my favorites. Multi Control is similar to Apple’s Universal Control. You can connect to your Samsung phone or tablet and position it as you would a secondary monitor. The difference is that instead of mirroring Windows to the device, your phone will continue to show Android. When you move your mouse from your main display, it will appear on the phone’s screen and let you control it with your mouse and keyboard as if they were connected directly to the phone.

There are a ton of things you could use this for, but I’ve narrowed it down to two things I do every day. I always listen to music while working, and instead of faffing around with pairing my earbuds to my PC, I keep them connected to my Fold 7. I have YouTube Music and Telegram in split-screen so I can control my music and message my wife without either app taking up space on my monitors. It’s also a convenient way to use apps that are better on mobile. I prefer the Android version of Google Keep versus the website, and now I can use my mouse and keyboard to quickly make notes while still using the mobile app.

Second Screen lets you use a Galaxy tablet as a wireless display for your Windows computer. This isn’t technically new (you’ve been able to do this via the Windows+K menu for years now), but the Second Screen app fixes one of the biggest annoyances with it: lag. When you connect to your tablet via this app, you’ll get a prompt on the computer that says, “Disconnect tablet Wi-Fi to reduce latency.” Clicking this disconnects the tablet from your Wi-Fi and connects it directly to your PC, eliminating the lag issues that prevented me from using it in the past. Now I can use my Galaxy Tab S10 Plus as a secondary monitor and use the S Pen with my PC without infuriating latency.

The other two features are undoubtedly useful, but I don’t use them as often.

Storage Share, as the name suggests, lets you access all the files on your Samsung phone or tablet from File Explorer on your PC. If you want to access your photos or anything else stored on your device and can’t be bothered to mess around with cables, this is a great solution. You can drag and drop files into a folder on your PC, or drag them directly into the app you need. The screenshots from my Fold 7 that were used earlier in this post were dragged from the phone’s storage right into our site’s media library.

Continue on other devices syncs your clipboard. One area where this has been handy is using two-factor authentication. I use the Google Authenticator app, which isn’t available on Windows. Usually, I have to manually enter my 2FA code after reading it from my phone screen. Now I can just tap the code to copy it to my phone’s clipboard, then paste it into the relevant field on my PC without waiting. It’s a small thing, but it can save a lot of time. If you use Samsung Internet, you can sync tabs across your devices as well, but I prefer Chrome, so I haven’t tried it myself.

Things aren’t perfect. ARM-based PCs are left out, which is weird given that my Galaxy Book 4 Edge is ARM-based and has all these features built in. Likewise, some users whose computers don’t have Intel network adapters report that Galaxy Connect doesn’t work at all.

Aside from those strange limitations, this is one of my favorite things Samsung has done in a long time. Multi Control and Second Screen have made working from my desktop better than ever, especially now that I can use the same workflows as I have on my Galaxy Book.