How to Sync Your Android Notifications to Your PC or Mac

If you’re working at your computer and your phone goes off, you can grab it, unlock it, and check the notification, likely throwing off your workflow. Or, you could just sync your notifications to your computer, so they show up right there—which really makes a lot more sense.

Fortunately, this is a pretty simple task thanks to a tool called Pushbullet. Now, I’ll tell you right now: Pushbullet does a lot more than just sync notifications to from your phone to your computer. for now, let’s dig into notification syncing in a bit more detail.

Step One: Install the Pushbullet App and Extension

The first thing you’ll need to do is get Pushbullet going on both your phone and your computer. It’s a free install from the Google Play Store on your phone, so go ahead and grab that now.

On the computer side of things, however, you have a couple of options. Regardless of what platform you’re using (Windows, Linux, Mac, Chrome OS, etc.) you can use the Chrome, Firefox, or Opera extensions for your browser. This should cover everything for most people.

If you’re a Windows user, you can also use the Windows app, which is a standalone application instead of a browser extension. Really, it just incorporates itself into the operating system a bit more.

Either way, it’s your decision on what you do. For this tutorial, however, I’ll be using the Chrome extension since it’s the most universal solution.

Step Two: Set up Pushbullet on the Phone

Once you have it installed, you’ll need to get everything set up. Go ahead and fire it up on your phone.

When you launch it, the first thing you’ll need to do is sign in, which you can do with either your Google or Facebook account. Regardless of which one you choose here, you’ll need to use the same login on your computer (when we get to that part).

Once you’ve signed in, you’ll need to give Pushbullet access to your notifications. Click “Enable” on this first screen, which will redirect you to the Notification Access settings page.

Here, go ahead and slide the toggle (it might be a checkbox instead) to allow Pushbullet access to all notifications. A warning will pop up, letting you know that this will give Pushbullet the ability read all of your notifications. That’s part of the deal here, so if you want to show notifications on your PC, click “Allow.”

This should toss you back into the Pushbullet setup, where you’ll allow it to mirror incoming phone call details—just tap “OK” then approve the following permissions (Phone and Contacts). Done.

The next step will not only allow you to see your text messages, but also reply to them. If you’re into that, tap “Enable,” then allow the SMS permission.

Once you’re finished with the initial set up, you’ll need to actually enable full notification mirroring. To do that, open the menu by sliding in from the left or tapping the three lines in the upper left corner. From there, choose “Notification Mirroring.”

To enable mirroring, slide the first toggle to the on position. If you only want notifications to mirror when you’re on Wi-Fi, go ahead and toggle the second one too. Lastly, if you don’t want to see silent notifications on your computer, you can turn that option off.

Fore more granular control, you can tap the “Choose which apps to enable” option and pick which apps you’ll actually see synced notifications from. That’s cool.

Step Two: Set Up Pushbullet on the Computer

At this point, you should already have the Pushbullet Chrome extension installed, which is what I find to be the easiest way to use the application. Again, if you’re using something different—like the Firefox extension or Windows app, for example—things may look a little bit different. But for the most part, the setup process should be the same.

The extension should show up as a little icon in Chrome’s toolbar. It’s a green circle with a whimsical little bullet in it. Click that. It will prompt you to sign in on Pushbullet.com (which you can also use to interact with Pushbullet’s various options on your phone). Just remember to log in with the same account you used on your phone!

Once that’s done, you’re in. There shouldn’t be any additional setup on the computer. Your notifications should show up as a tooltip-style notification on your computer moving forward.

Step Three: Send a Test Notification and Access Past Notifications

Just to make sure everything is working properly, go ahead and jump back into the Notification Mirroring settings on the phone. The bottom option should read “Send a test notification.” Go ahead and tap that.

A notification should show up on your computer. Boom, you’re done there.

With everything up and running, you can access your non-dismissed notifications in the Pushbullet extension by clicking the “Notifications” tab.

And that’s pretty much all there is to it.

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Moving Files between your Android and Desktop Gets Easier with AirDroid

The AirDroid app is probably the easiest way to manage your Android phone from your Mac or Windows PC. It lets you quickly transfer files between your phone and your computer, or from one Android phone to another, without requiring any USB cables.

Earlier, if you had to transfer a file from the computer to your Android phone via AirDroid, you had to open a special web page in your web browser, authenticate the connection and only then were you allowed to download or upload files.

Now AirDroid has released dedicated clients (software program) for both Windows and Mac that mostly bypasses the need for a web browser. Once you have installed the AirDroid software on your computer, you can simply drag one or more files to the desktop app and the files are instantly transferred to your Android device. It just works.

The transfer happens extremely fast if your computer and your phone are connected to the same WiFi network. However, if one of your devices is not on LAN, you can still send your files via the cloud. The files stay in the cloud for a week before they are permanently deleted.

You can view your phone call logs and also reply to SMS messages from the computer. It is however not possible to initiate phone calls from the desktop. And certain old features, like the ability to capture remote screenshots and photographs using your phone’s camera, still require the web browser.

AirDroid 3 is not available in the Google Play store yet but you can head over to beta.airdroid.com to download the Android app and the desktop clients that available for both Mac and Windows. You’ll need to sideload the apk files and that essentially means letting your Android phone to install apps outside the apps store.

AIRDROID OR PUSHBULLET – WHICH IS BETTER?

PushBullet is another popular alternative to AirDroid and offers similar features. With PushBullet, you can push notes and links from Chrome to your Android device with a right click, you can send files between various devices and it can mirror your Android notifications on the desktop.

However, the advantage with AirDroid is that it transfers files over WiFi (if available) while Push Bullet uploads the files to its own servers which is always slower than LAN transfer.


Both allow you to push text notes but while AirDroid is a Android only solution, PushBullet is available for both Android and iPhone. Also, Push Bullet offers a Chrome extension allowing you to send links and text from desktop to phone with a right-click. This is not available on AirDroid.

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