I’m exploring the Web on my Android phone just about all the time. Sometimes I find pages that I want to revisit on my computer. What’s the best and easiest way to share a Web page from my Android mobile device to my computer?
Shortcuts: Share URL from Android | Share via Messages | Share with QR Code | Share to Remote Device
Developers have finally figured out that we users don’t want to have each of our devices as a separate, isolated gizmo, but that we want them to all work together as seamlessly as possible. Enter a phone number into your Contacts or Address Book, make an appointment, delete an email message, and that should be reflected across all your devices, whether mobile or desktop. To a significant extent, that’s now true, particularly if you use the same Web browser and have your desktop and mobile devices all sharing a cloud account. To be fair, though, things can be too shared too; if I visit a page on my phone while waiting for new tires or an oil change, that doesn’t need to also flash up on my desktop browser!
Android is built around Google Chrome, however, so a lot of your Web interaction can be shared pretty easily, but even if you have Firefox on your mobile device and Safari or Tor on your desktop system, there are still various ways that you can share a great Web page with just a few taps. Heck, you can even text it to yourself, odd as that sounds. It’s the latest iteration of what we used to call “sneakernet”, but that’s another story. Let’s jump into this instead…
EASY WAY TO SHARE WEB PAGE ON ANDROID
Let’s say you’re interested in tapping into your son’s enthusiasm for the Harry Potter book series and want to learn more about how to make reading the books a fun adventure. Turns out that there’s an article about that in the Potterverse, on a site called WizardingWorld.com! Here’s the page you’re reading:
Now, how are you going to share this page with your desktop? You could use the “•••” link on the top right and choose “Sharing…” from the menu that appears, but that’s not the cool kids way! Instead, tap on the Web page URL on the very top. Anywhere in the address bar is fine, as long as it’s part of the URL. This promptly appears:
Generally, people use this to enter a new URL but notice that the current page is displayed with three icons. They are, left to right, share, copy, and edit (the URL itself). Tap on the three dot/two line share icon…
Ahhhh, there’s that share pop-up, and it has a bunch of options you’ve probably never seen before, including QR Code and “Long Screenshot”. From experimentation, Screenshot and Long Screenshot sadly do the same thing (I would love if Long Screenshot actually let you send a very long, skinny image that included everything on the page, but it’s only what’s visible, making it functionally identical to Screenshot. Perhaps it’s a yet-to-be-implemented feature?
SEND YOURSELF A WEB PAGE VIA SMS TEXT MESSAGE
One of the easiest ways to share a Web page with yourself – or anyone else – is to simply send the link to them via text message. Tap on “Messages” to do this and it’ll offer a few of your most recent chats as shortcuts:
I’ll send this one to myself, Dave T, by tapping on that contact. Messages is then opened up on the Android mobile device with the URL already in the text input box:
Handy. Easy. I actually use this technique all the time to share photos and images across all my devices, no additional thinking required 🙂
SHARE VIA QR CODE
Backing up to the original share window from tapping on the URL in the address bar in Chrome, what happens if you choose “QR Code” instead of Messages? Turns out it’s a super easy way to generate a QR code that can be easily scanned or shared:
Easy enough. In fact, point your mobile phone’s camera at the above QR code and see what happens!
Still, not the greatest way to share from your Android to your Desktop, so let’s try one other feature…
SHARE VIA “SEND TO YOUR DEVICES” IN CHROME
The best of these options if you want to be fancy about it is to go back to the original sharing menu, as shown earlier, and tap on “Send to your Devices”. When I do that, it shows my Mac system (because I use Chrome on my Mac):
I’ll choose my “MacBookPro” by tapping on it, and almost instantly Google Chrome on my Mac system pops up this window:
A tap on “Open in New Tab” and I’m reading the same page on my computer that I was on my mobile device. Pretty slick!
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