Microsoft is Moving Photos Viewing Out of Phone Link App to File Explorer

If you’ve used Phone Link on Windows 11 to quickly browse photos from your Android phone or iPhone, there’s some bad news for you. Microsoft has started notifying users that the photo viewing feature is leaving the Phone Link app. The company says that you’ll be able to view photos directly via File Explorer.

Phone Link has been great up until now, given how easy it is to check notifications, make calls, send messages, and even view their phone’s gallery without leaving the app. But a new alert spotted by Windows Latest, reads:

Photos is moving to File Explorer. Enjoy a better Photos experience in File Explorer. Now you can view videos and easily manage files with multi-select, copy/paste, and drag and drop.

Now you must be wondering how can you view phone’s photo, right? Well, the new setup apparently uses Windows’ Mobile Devices integration, which treats your phone like a connected device. If you don’t see your Phone pop up in File Explorer, you’ll need to enable a toggle that says “Show mobile device in File Explorer” from the Phone Link’s settings.

Once set up, Phone Link’s Photos section redirects you to File Explorer, and opens the phone’s camera folder, just as you see files after opening any external drive after connecting to your Windows PC. We’ve also tested the feature in our Windows 11 PC and it works flawlessly.

No wonder, Microsoft is revamping how phones connect with Windows by integrating Phone Link’s mirroring tools with File Explorer’s native file handling. Although Phone Link isn’t going away, Microsoft is narrowing its focus down to notifications and messaging.

As of now, you can still see photos both on the Phone Link interface as well as in the File Explorer. So, the question here is, when Microsoft will fully move photo viewing from Phone Link?