Have you ever missed out on notifications on your phone because you were busy working on your PC? If you have, you will find Pushbullet very useful. Pushbullet makes viewing your notifications and notifications across multiple devices extremely convenient. Pushbullet ensures you never miss a notification no matter what Android device you are actively using.
We all know how frustrating and time consuming it could be to have to connect USB wires or going through the whole process of pairing devices via Bluetooth just to transfer small files from one device to another. Pushbullet makes it much less frustrating to transfer “petty” files between your devices as discussed in the following paragraphs. Following Google’s Material Design guidelines, Pushbullet’s user interface is very easy to navigate and is consistent throughout supported platforms – Android, iOS, Chrome, Firefox, Opera and Windows.
Notification Mirroring and SMS Sync
Pushbullet syncs your notifications across multiple devices seamlessly. It allows you to view and act on your notifications on, say, your smartphone from your desktop computer or tablet. Pushbullet makes use of Chrome’s rich notification system to display actionable notifications. When you receive a mirrored notification on your PC via Chrome, you can dismiss or reply from your PC. Dismiss a notification on your PC and it goes away on your device too. You can reply to your messages on WhatsApp, Hangouts, Telegram and other instant messaging apps from your PC. With SMS sync enabled, you can reply an SMS and even initiate a conversation from your PC. Awesome stuff.
Push anything to any device!
Pushbullet lets you transfer literally anything — links, texts, maps, files — from one device to another. Best part is it works in reverse. In other words, you can send files from your PC to your Android device or from your Android device to your PC or between your Android devices. You can push from one device to many others and you can do so all at once! You can even push files, texts, links to your friend’s device assuming they also have Pushbullet installed.
The “free” feature allows you send only up to 25MB per file while paying for “pro” allows up to 1GB per file.
For a demonstration of Pushbullet, watch this video by Marc The Geek
Automatically copy links & notes
Pushbullet allows you easy accessibility to notes and links pushed to your device by automatically copying them to your clipboard after a push, so you can paste right away anywhere on your device. This feature can be enabled in Pushbullet’s Settings. However, you should note that it works with only notes and links.
Universal copy & paste
As if pushing links in one-click is not easy enough, “Universal copy & paste” makes it even easier by syncing your clipboard across multiple devices. This allows you copy links from one device and paste on another. To do use this feature, enable “Universal Copy & Paste” in Pushbullet’s Settings on your devices and computers you want to sync. Now copy a link on one device and it’s ready to be pasted on another device, no extra step needed. One catch though, this is a “pro” feature.
End-to-end Encryption
Pushbullet also takes in consideration your privacy with end-to-end encryption support for notification mirroring, universal copy & paste and SMS. With this feature enabled, your data is encrypted before it leaves your device until it is received by the device(s) it was sent to. You can be sure that data sent and received are secured.
Go to Pushbullet’s Settings to enable this feature and set-up an encryption password. You will need to enable this in Pushbullet Settings on every device.
Remotely access your files
Pushbullet allows you to remotely access files on your devices and PC. To start using this feature, tap on “Remote Files” in Pushbullet’s navigation drawer. Your devices should be listed here. Tap on the overflow menu on the top right corner and click “Enable this device”. Now, you will be able to see the device on another device and access its contents.
Follow cool content via Pushbullet Channels
“Channels” are notification feeds you can subscribe to. Get notified of timely updates from the channels you follow. There’s a number of cool channel to subscribe to. You may even create your own Channel.
Is it worth paying for?
Not all features of Pushbullet are entirely free. Some features limited require payment on a subscription basis to lift the limitations. “Pro” feature include; Universal Copy & Paste, transfering files that exceed 25MB in size, unlimited messages (“free” allows only 100 messages per month).
That said, it is still a convenient way to send small files and mirror notification across multiple devices. Personally, the free features are enough for what I need it to do. If you find make the “Pro” features compelling enough, then by all means pay for it. I’ve been using Pushbullet since its first beta release and I must say the developers are well deserving of it. I definitely will join “Pro” wagon when the need comes.
Bottom line: Paid or free, Pushbullet is awesome!..lol. Head over to Play Store to install the app and begin pushing!
