Android notifications, how to read them even from PC and Mac

To manage from Windows and Mac computers the notifications that arrive on your Android smartphone you can use the Pushbullet program. Here's how it works

When we're working on the PC, it's likely that our smartphone will ring or vibrate to alert us of a new notification. If we have to check our phone every time, it's hard to keep our concentration. Luckily, however, we can view smartphone notifications directly on the computer.

To get such a feature you need to own an Android phone that is greater than or equal to version 4.1. While compatible operating systems as far as PCs are concerned are not a problem. You can, in fact, view notifications from a smartphone on both Windows and Mac computers. The first step to take is to install the Pushbullet application from the Play Store. At this point, once the app is launched for the first time, we'll have to register our Google account in it. In the wizard, the app will ask us if we want to enable mirroring notifications, and we'll just have to put a check mark under this item.

Installing Pushbullet on Chrome

Once we've installed the app on our phone, we just have to download the Pushbullet extension to our computer's Chrome browser as well. To install the extension, we'll need to log into the Chrome store and search for Pushbullet. Obviously, we'll need to register the same Google account in the extension that we used for the smartphone app.

How to use Pushbullet

As we'll have installed the app on the PC and the phone, and once we've enabled the mirroring notifications feature, we'll start seeing all the incoming messages and alerts in the smartphone on Chrome as well. By default, the app uses pop-up notifications, meaning they disappear after a few seconds. But all of these are saved in the Notification Center. For those who have Windows computers it's located in the lower right corner, while in Macs it's in the upper right corner. Obviously we can customize notifications by choosing which ones to display. For example, we can "mute" Telegram but keep Facebook Messenger active, and so on. Be careful when deleting notifications. If we delete them from the PC they remain on the phone but if we delete the message from the smartphone it will no longer be visible even on the computer.

Advanced functions

Clicking on the icon of the extension for Chrome you can mute incoming notifications, or disable the connection with the smartphone. Moreover, Pushbullet also works in the background. So if we close all Chrome windows but receive a notification we will still hear a sound alerting us. Pushbullet can do much more: the program can also be used to transfer files and documents from your smartphone to your computer and vice versa.