How to connect your phone to your computer via Wi-Fi: 4 ways

Users often need to connect a gadget to a laptop or other similar device. They do this for the purpose of transferring data from one device to another. The traditional connection method is using a cable.

However, this method is not always available and convenient. If, for example, the wire is faulty, then you will not be able to use it. You can solve the problem if you connect via Wi-Fi. Below are ways to do this.

We suggest you immediately watch a video review of methods that will help connect your smartphone and PC:

Via the My FTP Server program

The My FTP Server program is another way to connect a laptop to a gadget wirelessly. To do this, first of all, the application is installed on a tablet or phone. After this, perform the following actions:

launch the program and enter the settings;
enter your account login and password;
The entered information is saved.

On the main panel of the program, click on the “Start Server” button. After this, the corresponding window lights up green and instead of the inscription “off” the inscription “on” appears.

Next, set up a laptop or computer:

log in to the “My Computer” subsection;
using the manipulator key located on the right side, click on the free field and go to the “Add a new element to the network environment” tab;

a new window appears and click on the “Next” button;
copy the network address from the program and paste it into the appropriate line;

Enter your login and password into the fields, then enter the address;
Click on the “Next” window.

After this, the “My Computer” menu appears, in which the new item is located.

Open it and enter your login and password in the appropriate windows. This is how you gained access to the gadget files.

What can you do on a phone that is connected to a computer via Wi-Fi

By connecting a smartphone running any operating system to a personal computer, you can open up a huge number of possibilities. As already mentioned, this could be a simple file exchange, or perhaps full synchronization of compatible devices, fine-tuning of a wireless network and other issues.

Traditionally, a USB charging cable is used to connect a smartphone to a personal computer. One end of it is connected to the corresponding socket on the PC system unit, and the other to the phone. This is the simplest method that does not require additional software and knowledge, but it is not possible if the cord is broken, lost, or on one side is inextricably connected to the power supply (adapter). This problem can be solved by using data transfer via a wireless Wi-Fi network. Below are the most popular ways to connect your phone to a laptop or PC via wifi.

Using the SHAREit program

This is the easiest way to wirelessly connect a computer or laptop to a gadget. First of all, you need to install the SHAREit program on your computer. It is recommended to download the application from the official website. The same program is installed on a tablet or phone. After this, proceed as follows:

launch applications on both devices;
go to the program menu on your phone and click on “Connect to PC”;
They find the name of their device on the radar and click on it;
confirm the connection.

After this, they access the gadget files from a computer or laptop.

On Windows 10

You can work with all the above-described applications on Windows 10. There are no restrictions in this regard. The “top ten” itself also provides a built-in connection method – broadcasting from a mobile device.

All you need to do is open the Connect application (you can find it in the system search in the Start menu). While it is running, the PC or laptop will be detected by the smartphone as wireless displays or monitors. The main thing is that they are connected to the same wireless Wi-Fi network and support Miracast technology. In the latest updates, this step is not necessary, so you just need to enable Wi-Fi modules on both devices.

After turning on the network, you need to lower the notification shade on your phone and find the “Broadcast” icon. If the monitor is not detected, then you should go to the settings and turn on the search. It will have exactly the same name as the computer. When the connection is complete, the mobile phone display will be displayed on the monitor screen in the program window. The practical benefit of such actions is to demonstrate presentations from your phone, photographs and videos. You won't be able to transfer files this way.

Via the AirDroid app

To connect a PC and a smartphone and access the folders of a gadget running Android OS from a computer, download the AirDroid program from Google Play. After this, perform the following steps:

launch the application;

copy the address for the computer;

The address is entered into the browser and the connection to the gadget is confirmed.

For the connection of an Android device to a computer or laptop to be successful, it is important that the phone is connected to the same network as the PC. Only this will allow you to establish a connection wirelessly.

There is nothing complicated about how to connect Wi-Fi on a smartphone via a router:

Go to “Settings”;
Select the “Wi-Fi” item;
Connect to your router.

Why do you need to connect your computer and smartphone?

How exactly to synchronize a mobile phone with a computer will be described further; first you need to understand why to do this. A few examples:

Copy important phone contacts, birthdays and holidays to a shared notebook.
Transfer photos and videos that take up a lot of space on your smartphone to your computer.
Send text files and documents stored on your laptop to your phone. This data will always be at hand and quickly sent via instant messengers if necessary.
Download heavy programs using a more powerful device, and then redirect them to another device.
Perform flashing or checking software elements on the cell phone. Etc.

Additionally! By connecting devices via Wi-Fi, you can transfer information not only from your phone (or tablet) to your computer, but also back.

Three main functions of connecting a smartphone and a PC: control, file transfer, network access

Possible problems and solutions

It is not always possible to access gadget folders from a computer using WI-FI. The reasons for this may be the following.

Router settings

Typically, the lack of connection is explained by the fact that the router settings are set to a mode in which the devices are connected to the local network, but no connection is established between them. The following steps will help solve the problem:

enter the router settings menu;
go to the “Home Network” subsection;
select the sub-item “WI-FI Settings”;
Place an icon next to the inscription: “Enable access point isolation.”

Some routers may have a different procedure for changing settings. It is recommended to read the instructions for the device.

Computer settings

If the connection is successful, but no other devices appear in the Explorer menu on your phone, then the problem is with your computer. Changing certain parameters will help solve it. To do this, perform the following manipulations:

in the menu of Windows 7 or another version, select the “CC networks” subsection;
go to the sub-item “Additional sharing options”;
enable network discovery and access to files and devices;

deactivate the password when connecting to shared files;

select the “Properties” column;
click on the “Advanced settings” button;
put a tick next to the inscription: “Share the folder”;

Once again, scan network devices in the Explorer menu: “Network - LAN”.

Knowing how to connect your phone and computer to the router, you can get access to the Internet. To have access to gadget folders from a laptop, you can connect devices via WI-FI using applications.

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How to connect iPhone to PC

You can connect an iPhone to a computer via wifi if the iTunes version is from 10.5. Special applications are also used that can connect it to any PC.

iOS

So, how to connect your phone to your computer via wifi? Updating to iOS 5 (since 2011) allowed the iPhone to be connected to its “native” PC wirelessly.

To make sure of this you should:

On your phone, go to the “Settings” - “General” menu

The option “Sync with iTunes over Wi-Fi” should appear here. In this case, you can use the handset; pairing is indicated only by an icon on the screen.

The established connection between the phone and the computer via wifi allows you to exchange files (the speed is lower than when connecting with a cord), run backups and download new applications from the AppStore. Phone control from PC is not available.

To successfully connect devices, you must be connected to the same router. After clicking the “Sync...” button on your phone, you should launch iTunes on your PC and on the “Devices” tab there will be an icon notifying you that the handset is connected.

Let's look at the direct connection diagram:

iMAC—System Settings—Network. Click on the access point you are using;

in the list that opens, the final item will be “Create a network”;

in the lines that open, change only “Network name” and “Security”;
then “Encryption type” - WEP;
come up with a password;
save changes;

Now we connect to the new WiFi network from the iPhone. Access to the file system from the PC will be available through iTunes.

Connecting your phone to your computer via Wi-Fi to transfer files

If you need to connect your phone to your computer via Wi-Fi and transfer some files wirelessly, then the easiest and most reliable way to connect is the FTP protocol.

FTP protocol or File Transfer Protocol is a specialized protocol for transferring files between computers. It is widely used for exchanging files on local networks and the Internet. But, thanks to its versatility, FTP can be used to solve a variety of problems. In particular, it can be used to connect your phone to a computer via Wi-Fi and exchange files between them.

In order to connect your phone to a computer via FTP, you need to install the “FTP Server” application on your phone. The fact is that to transfer files using the FTP protocol, one of the computers must act as an FTP server and the other as an FTP client. It will be more convenient if the server’s work is performed by the phone. To do this, you need to install a special application on it. There are a large number of such applications in the Play Market app store. You can find them by searching for "ftp server". For example, we will use one of the most popular applications of this kind, which is called “Ftp Server”. To use this method, you need to download this application and install it on your phone.

You also need to make sure that the phone and computer are connected to the same local network. The phone must be connected to the network via Wi-Fi, and the computer can connect either via Wi-Fi or via cable.

If everything is fine with your network connection, then launch the FTP server application and click on the power button for the server to start working.

As a result, you will see a message stating that the FTP server is running and accessible at a specific address. In the screenshot below, the address looks like ftp://192.168.1.10:2221, but in your case the address may be different.

The address that the FTP server application gives you can be used to connect to your phone from a computer. To do this, you need to open Windows Explorer and enter the address of the FTP server from the application in the address bar. If you are prompted to enter your login and password, you can also view this data in the FTP server application on your phone.

If everything was done correctly, the computer will connect to the FTP server on the phone and you will have access to all the folders that are on the phone. Now you can work with these folders in the same way as if the phone was connected via cable. For example, you can delete and move files, you can copy files from your computer to your phone or vice versa.

If desired, the FTP server can be connected to a Windows computer as a network drive. To do this, open the “My Computer” window, right-click on the free space and select “Add a new item to the network environment.”

Then click on the “Next” button until the field for entering the address appears. In this field you need to enter the FTP server address from the application and save the settings by clicking on the “Next” button.

After this, a network folder will appear in the “My Computer” window, which will point to the FTP server on your mobile phone. Using this network folder, you can quickly connect to your phone and exchange files with it at any time.

To connect your phone to a computer to transfer files, you can use not only FTP, but also other similar protocols. For example, you can use the http protocol and an application that will run a web server on the phone. But, this method will not be so simple and convenient, since you will have to use a web browser to connect and work with files.

How to watch videos from a computer on an Android device via Wi-Fi without downloading

Having considered all the simplest tasks, let's move on to the most difficult (although not too difficult :)) - streaming video from a computer to an Android device. There may be several methods, however, following the concept of minimalism in installing third-party software on a PC, the most universal option seems to me to be using a local network.

To implement our idea in this case, the first thing we need to do is make the folder with video/audio files on the computer accessible via the local network. This is easy to do by calling the context menu and selecting “Sharing and Security”:

In the properties window that opens, all we need to do is click “Ok”. If suddenly a window appears in front of you informing you that opening access to the folder is unsafe, simply ignore it and close it.

This completes the preparatory stage. All our video files are now available over the local network and all we have to do is access them from our Android device. For this we need an application with LAN detection functionality.

One such application is the file manager ES Explorer (aka ES File Explorer).

This is a fairly powerful file manager with numerous functions, but now we are only interested in one of them - wireless access to the local network. To activate this function, you need to click the button with the image of a phone and a globe in the upper left corner of the main program screen, in the menu that appears, go to the “Network” section and select “LAN”.

The screen that opens is still empty, so we need to find all the computers available on the local network. To do this, click the “Search” button on the bottom panel and wait a bit until the scanning is completed. If everything was done correctly, ES Explorer will easily find and display the computer with its IP as the name:

Click on the icon of the found PC and get a list of folders available for viewing on the local network. Open the one you want and click on the movie you want to watch. A window will open to select the application with which we want to view the file:

And here many people usually advise choosing BSPlayer FREE as a player (direct link from BestFREE.ru).

I don’t argue that the player is good, but sometimes some videos (for example, WMV format) don’t play well. Therefore, it is advisable that you have another alternative player installed “in reserve” that supports streaming video. I recommend installing MX Player as such (direct link from BestFREE.ru).

If you have a device based on ARM 5, 6 or 7 processors, then you may also need additional codecs for the players to work (see and download the full list of codecs from the official developer sites: MX Player and BSPlayer). However, if the player does not require this, then there is NO NEED TO DOWNLOAD ANYTHING.

If you did everything as written above, then with a high degree of probability you will be able to watch the video (the music should be at 100%). However, sometimes punctures happen... Especially if the phone/tablet is “weak” and the video is “heavy” (for example, in MKV or DVD format).

There is no need to blame the developers (or us for what they advised :)), but you should put up with it or convert the video to a “lighter” AVI format with a smaller size.

Finally, a few tips:

Using ES Explorer, you can also exchange files with a computer, but in this case (since access is via a local network), folders with the necessary files must be “shared” on the PC.
In order not to search for local network servers every time and to have quick access to previously found computers, you can proceed as follows. After finding your PC and it appears in the LAN list, hold it down (long tap) until the change menu appears. In this menu, click the “Change server” button and in the window that opens, set a name for the permanent connection in the “Show as” field, then click “Ok”. The connection shortcut will now always be on the LAN screen!
ES Explorer is not the only file manager that provides the ability to work with a local network via Wi-Fi. For example, I also like working with Total Commander (direct link from BestFREE.ru) for Android, which has a plugin for working with LAN (direct link from BestFREE.ru) (however, it does not yet have automatic network scanning, so you have to make settings manually).

Share internet from laptop to phone

That’s why I have a detailed article about this. Do not look at the fact that it is written for the Windows 10 operating system - these instructions are suitable for all operating systems of the Microsoft family. Also, as an advice, I will say that it is best not to use third-party programs, but to use the command line and “BAT” files.

How can you distribute the Internet from a smartphone?

There are several ways to distribute the Internet from a smartphone to your laptop:

Creating and launching a Wi-Fi access point on a smartphone;
Using a USB cable;
Via Bluetooth.

These methods differ in the degree of convenience, Internet speed and the number of devices (computers) that can be connected to a smartphone to provide Internet access. Additionally, some of the above methods for transferring internet from smartphone to laptop are less secure than others.

The Internet distribution methods discussed in this article are available on smartphones running the Android and iOS operating systems. Windows Phone users can only share the Internet via a Wi-Fi hotspot.

Setting up the VirtualRouter Plus program

First download VirtualRouter Plus, you can download version 2.1.0 (which I configured) from this link, or. Links have been verified.

Sync via USB

Connect your multimedia gadget to your computer or laptop using a USB cable. Usually it comes bundled with a mobile device. In any case, it is not difficult to buy it. - A USB icon and the inscription “USB device connected” should appear on the tablet’s screen at the top left. If it is not there, perform the following manipulations: “Settings” - “Advanced” - “USB Settings” - “Connect a USB drive to PC.” - After this, one or two additional drives should appear on your PC in the “Computer” folder. The first is the flash memory of your multimedia device, the second is additional SD memory, if you have it installed, of course.

If something went wrong and you were still unable to synchronize both devices, most likely the manufacturer of your mobile device disabled this feature “by default.” To connect it, go to “Settings”, select “For Developers” and activate the “USB Debugging” mode by checking the box next to it. In the window that will tell you to enable external storage mode, click OK. This operation is carried out once, and it will not be necessary to repeat it in the future when connecting synchronization with a PC, unless you disable the debugging mode or return the settings to factory settings.

Setting up an FTP connection between an Android device and Windows

Before moving on to the setup, you need to decide whether you want to establish such a connection only occasionally, and after each disconnection and connection of your smartphone to the router, enter a new address on your computer, or you will often use an FTP connection and want to create a connection to your device on your computer. Then you can simply launch the server on your mobile device and immediately view the files on your computer.

If you want to create an FTP connection to your Android device on your computer, and not enter the address each time, then you must reserve a static IP address for your phone (tablet) in the settings of your router. So that the router for your device always gives the same IP.

This is done differently on different routers. I will definitely prepare separate instructions for different routers later. Here, for example:

IP reservation on an ASUS router Go to the router settings, and on the main page click on the “Clients” tab

Next, click on the device for which you want to reserve an address, set the switch opposite “MAC and IP address Binding” to the “ON” position, and click the “Apply” button. Everything is ready, now our phone, in my case Lenovo, will always receive the address 192.168.1.178.

Connecting your phone to your computer via Wi-Fi for remote control

If you need to connect your phone to your computer via Wi-Fi to control the computer, then there are other solutions for this. Some of these solutions provide complete control over your computer, while others only allow you to perform certain operations. For example, the Unified Remote application is good for basic computer control. This application is available on Android phones and iPhones, and the server side of the application is available for all popular operating systems, including Windows, Mac and Linux.

In the free version, the Unified Remote application allows you to control your computer's mouse and keyboard, control your media player, and work with files. In the paid version, the application's capabilities are much wider. In particular, it becomes possible to see the desktop and control third-party programs on the computer.

Synchronization features for Windows 10

The peculiarity of synchronizing operating system number 10 is that you do not need to download additional programs - everything can be done directly in the device settings. This was not available on other models. Previously, this could only be done using a special wire. Now the user only needs to make the correct and correct settings to easily and easily connect the device directly to the PC.

The advantage of such a system is precisely that the user does not have to download additional utilities - everything necessary is already at hand. The only condition is the presence of a common Internet, which comes from the same network, as well as the user’s working mobile number. This is a mandatory step for the user to connect the device to the PC.

More details about the process can be seen in this video

To synchronize, you need to take the following steps:

Open settings on Windows 10. As a rule, they are located on the main panel and look like a gear;
Then we find the “Phone” tab in them. This is necessary so that the user can quickly link the computer to the phone through it;
If the user has not previously used additional mobile numbers, then you need to click on the “Add phone” button;
After this, a window will appear in which you must specify the number and country code. After the user clicks on “Send”, an SMS will be automatically sent to the dialed numbers;
The SMS will contain a link that helps the user download the Microsoft Apps mobile application. Note! You definitely need to download this program in order to continue working with device synchronization.
After entering this application, the user will have access to all kinds of settings and ways that he can do directly on the PC.

This is the main feature of the Windows 10 operating system.