Choice is one of the defining factors of Android. Our ability to choose which web browser we uses as our default browser, how our homescreen looks and feels and even which phone we want to use is part of what makes Android…Android. As such, it’s no surprise that there are more than just one or two different apps that offer similar functionality, and if one of them doesn’t quite “click” with what you were looking for, there’s often a second alternative out there. Join is one of those alternatives, and it offers much of the functionality of the popular Pushbullet app that a lot of Android users might have tried.
Join, as its name suggests, aims to bring all of your devices closer together in some way or other, and it’s available for free for one month (with a one-off payment after that period). While much of the idea here is to bring your Android smartphones and tablets closer to your PC or laptop, Join can be accessed from on Android device to control another, and will even work on iOS machines, too. In our example, we tried Join on a Mac – and there was no Mac app, so we just used the Chrome Extension, which should work well on Chromebooks, too – and we were able to send SMS messages to contacts, with all previous messages listed. Beyond that, we could send little snippets of text to and from connected devices, install APKs from a webpage, and even set a background we found in Chrome on the Mac on a connected OnePlus 2.
Join clearly has a lot to offer, and what’s nice about how the app handles data is that everything is stored in Google Drive, and there’s even encryption available as well. It might not have the overall polish of Pushbullet, and for some people it might not even be as good as Pushbullet, but it’s a fine alternative nonetheless, and it’s certainly worth looking into given the free month trial and the easy setup procedure. The Google Play Store listing below will get Join installed on your devices, and it also includes links to the Windows 10 app and Chrome Extension, too.
