This free, open-source app lets me management my Android cellphone from my Windows PC

Do you envy the Apple ecosystem and need you had one thing related between your Windows PC and Android phone? Or possibly you’ve wished your cellphone to indicate up as a window in your desktop, so you’ll be able to poke at it together with your mouse and kind on it together with your keyboard as an alternative of choosing it up each two minutes? If so, boy, do I’ve the proper app for you — and sure, it’s fully free and open supply.

Meet Sefirah

It’s Phone Link, scrcpy, and KDE Connect mixed

If you’ve got gone down the rabbit gap of pairing your Android cellphone together with your Windows PC, you in all probability already learn about Phone Link. It’s an official app from Microsoft and normally comes preinstalled on Windows. You simply want to put in the companion app in your Android cellphone. Once paired, you’ll be able to see your cellphone’s name log, messages, app notifications, and images in your Windows PC. You also can management media playback, sync the clipboard, and even wirelessly ship information between the 2 gadgets.

Overall, it’s a fairly strong app, however most of its highly effective options require you to pair it with the suitable smartphone (usually a Samsung). For instance, my Google Pixel 10 cannot use Phone Link to reflect its display or apps to the Windows desktop.

Now, if you happen to’re searching for a extra open platform for pairing your cellphone and your PC, KDE Connect is the go-to option. It doesn’t look as polished as Phone Link, nevertheless it does supply quite a lot of the identical options after which some. For occasion, with KDE Connect, you’ll be able to management your cellphone together with your PC’s mouse and keyboard, run terminal commands on your PC from your phone, and do much more. What KDE Connect doesn’t supply is the power to reflect your Android cellphone in your PC. For that, you need scrcpy, a extremely popular and dependable instrument for this workflow.

That’s quite a lot of apps to juggle in order for you the absolute best synergy between your Android cellphone and Windows PC. Now, image Steve Jobs on stage doing the entire “an iPod, a cellphone, an web communicator” bit, besides it’s Phone Link, scrcpy, and KDE Connect — Phone Link, scrcpy, KDE Connect — Phone Link, scrcpy, KDE Connect.

That’s mainly Sefirah.

It brings the graphical polish of Phone Link and looks like a contemporary Windows-native app, all whereas providing most of the superior options you get with KDE Connect. It additionally presents native assist for scrcpy, saving you the difficulty of opening the terminal each time you wish to mirror your cellphone. With Sefirah, you merely click on the cellphone icon contained in the app, and it opens a brand new window mirroring your cellphone. You also can have a number of cases open concurrently, every operating a distinct app, which opens up an entire new paradigm of multitasking.

How to put in and arrange Sefirah

It’ll barely take you 10 minutes

For as succesful as it’s, setting Sefirah up is fairly painless and simple. Although you will have to open the terminal, you’ll solely must do it as soon as and by no means once more.

First, set up Sefirah in your cellphone and PC. The supply code is obtainable on GitHub. However, I downloaded it from the Microsoft Store on Windows, and it really works completely. On Android, you may get it from the Google Play Store.

Once put in, open each apps, stroll by means of the setup wizard, grant the permissions they ask for, and pair the 2 gadgets. Make positive your PC and cellphone are on the identical Wi-Fi community — all of the communication occurs over your LAN, so if they don’t seem to be on the identical community, this may not work.

At this level, your cellphone and PC are paired, and most issues already work. You can see your cellphone notifications in your PC, share your clipboard, share information, take calls in your PC, and extra. What you don’t have but is display mirroring. For that, you should setup scrcpy with Sefirah.

To get that, go to the scrcpy GitHub releases page and obtain the Win64 asset. It comes as a ZIP file. Extract it to a folder someplace in your laptop that you’re going to bear in mind. Then open Sefirah, go to Settings, discover the scrcpy location choice, and choose the folder the place you simply extracted scrcpy.

Next, you should enable ADB on your phone. To do that:

1. Open the Settings app in your cellphone and go to the About cellphone choice.
2. Tap the Build quantity seven instances, and it ought to say one thing like “You’re now a developer.”
3. Go again to the principle Settings web page, find and open Developer choices.
4. Scroll down till you see USB debugging and allow it.
5. Below it, you must see Wireless debugging — allow it as properly.
6. Plug your cellphone into your PC with a USB cable.
7. A pop-up will seem in your cellphone asking whether or not to permit USB debugging from this laptop. Check the Always permit field and settle for it.

And that’s it.

Now, open the Sefirah app in your Windows PC, click on the cellphone icon, and a brand new window ought to seem, mirroring your cellphone. Whatever occurs in your cellphone reveals up right here. You also can use your mouse to click on round and work together together with your cellphone. Sefirah additionally has an app launcher that lists each app in your cellphone. You can use it to launch any of them in its personal window.

By now, you’ve acquired the whole lot arrange — nearly. There’s nonetheless one minor annoyance: the second you unplug the USB cable connecting your cellphone and PC, the mirroring stops. To repair this, open the Sefirah Windows app and go to Settings > Devices, choose your Android cellphone, and click on the gear icon to open its settings. Inside, go to ADB settings and allow TCP/IP mode. Once that’s enabled, you’ll be able to unplug the USB cable, and Sefirah ought to reconnect wirelessly by itself.

Is Sefirah protected?

As far as I can inform — sure

Sefirah is a reasonably new venture that’s asking for lots of permissions: notification entry, accessibility permissions, full storage entry, ADB, the works. As such, it’s clever to ensure the app is protected and isn’t phoning dwelling with all that information.

Now, on its Play Store web page, the developer claims that no information is collected and nothing is shared with third events. I additionally ran Sefirah with Portmaster — an application-level firewall that shows exactly what each app on your system is communicating with. I used Sefirah usually for some time, and each connection request I noticed was LAN-only. Nothing was making an attempt to achieve an exterior server.

So personally, I belief it.

That stated, if you happen to’ve acquired genuinely delicate or mission-critical stuff in your cellphone and also you’re cautious about putting in random apps from the web, I’d advise you to do your due diligence. The supply code is publicly out there on GitHub — it’s an open-source app, in spite of everything. You can audit it your self or have an LLM examine it for something suspicious earlier than committing.

Sefirah has turn into an important a part of my Windows-Android ecosystem

I’m very open about the truth that I’m jealous of Apple’s ecosystem options and have spent quite a lot of time making an attempt to construct one thing equal for myself. I’ve gotten fairly far with that venture, utilizing apps like KDE Connect, LocalSend, Spacedesk, and Nextcloud to maximise synergy between my gadgets. And now Sefirah has joined that checklist and has turn into a core a part of how the entire thing works.