Pushbullet isn't new, but since I installed it maybe a year ago, it has sneakily gotten a lot better, especially for Android phones. And as I used to it to text from my browser for the umpteenth time yesterday, it struck me how great it's really become. So maybe you've heard already but let me fire off a reminder: You should download this app.
At its heart, Pushbullet is a dumb simple app with one main purpose: Getting things from your phone to your computer, or from your computer to your phone. Pick up the app for any OS and install one of the extensions for just about any browser, link the two together and suddenly it's child's play to move anything from phone to laptop or vice versa. Just share using Pushbullet on your phone, or right-click virtually anything your browser to send it to any device. It's dumb simple and infinitely better than emailing things to yourself.
Now if you're an iPhone user, this is where the story ends. But if you're on Android, it's only the beginning. (Scratch that: Pushbullet just added complete iOS and Mac support today. Hell yes!)
Fandroids, have you ever looked at one of your hip Apple friends sending messages and texts from their computer while you seethe with envy as they reap one of the handiest benefits of living inside Apple's walled garden? Pushbullet can't bring you iMessages but it can bring you super easy browser-texting.
Just pull up the extension in your browser, and Pushbullet will connect to your phone to pull up a list of contacts you can text right there.
And when the responses come back in, you'll get a pop-up window with a reply box right underneath it.
Other notifications will pop up too. Pushbullet automatically sends all your phone notifications over to your computer in the form of little windows. Not only that, you can take actions on them with a click. Snooze alarms, archive emails, dismiss Facebook alerts, or just mute certain types of notifications so you never see them on your computer again. Pushbullet is easy to teach with just a few clicks and suddenly you're never fumbling for your phone at your desk again. You can even use it to sync notifications across all your Android devices, assuming you have more than one.
None of these tricks are exclusive to Pushbullet, and some other apps actually one-up them. You can text from your computer or a tablet with stuff like MightySMS, or even mirror your entire phone screen with the hella powerful AirDroid. But what's great about Pushbullet is that it just works; other apps have always failed me by being overly-complex, feature-bloated, or just straight up buggy. Pushbullet, on the other hand, is simple, streamlined, unobtrusive, and fantastic enough I can recommend it to literally anyone. You should definitely go grab it.
Top art by Joe Fedewa originally appeared on Phandroid