Fox to Phone requires two installations and a Google account, but once installed it’s a nearly effortless tool for quickly sending links and snippets of text from your desktop to your Android-powered smartphone.
Getting started isn’t complicated, but can be a bit tedious. Once you’ve installed this browser extension, you’ll have to install the Android app on your phone. Frustratingly, there’s no quick link or QR code to the app, and instead only encourages you to search for it in the Android Marketplace.
Once the app has been downloaded to the phone, running it for the first time will walk you through the setup process. You must use a regular Google account; Google Apps users aren’t supported at this time. With a valid account chosen, the app will connect to the Chrome extension account, then ask for your preferred handling of links. Users can choose between having links open automatically, or receive a notification that the link has been received and requires user input. Both links and text snippets can be sent by simply highlighting a piece of text on a Web page and then hitting the extension’s icon that installs next to the browser’s location bar.
The extension component of the Fox to Phone tool works flawlessly. However, there are some minor problems on the Android side. One of these involves problems sending snippets of text from a message in Gmail, where the result on the Android side is an attempt to open Gmail in the browser. Fox to Phone allows users to right-click on selected text and send it that way, as well as from the add-on’s button bar icon.