When you own Apple devices only, the Apple ecosystem couldn’t be more perfect. You can sync your data across your laptop, phone, and tablet and seamlessly transition working from one place to another. If you have a MacBook and any great Android phone, it’s difficult. Despite these shortcomings, you may not want to switch from Android to iOS, but there are ways to make your Android phone and MacBook work better together. While things won’t be perfect, they might be better than you imagine.
Messaging: Web services and apps
As an Android user, you may never be able to use the preinstalled and seamlessly integrated Apple Messages app complete with iMessage. But as long as blue bubble envy isn’t a problem for you or your friends, you can use the Google Messages web app. It’s a polished and good-looking app that serves fine as a messaging client for your MacBook. A ton of other apps even offer native applications. Telegram, WhatsApp Desktop, and Signal work well on macOS and sync your chats with your phone.
Since Google Messages doesn’t offer a native experience, we recommend using Flotato to get as close to that as possible. This app turns any website into what feels more like a native application, with its own icon for the macOS dock and an experience without the address bar you know from your browser. It’s based on the rendering engine Apple uses in Safari, so it’s lightweight and easy on your battery.
You can also use Google Chrome to create a web app like this. However, you can’t fully quit Chrome when you use a Chrome web app, so Flotato feels more native.
You’ll pay $19 to make Flotato work with more than a handful of windows at once. Still, as long as you don’t use it for more than Google Messages, it’s free.
Sync devices with cloud storage: Continuity
Moving from device to device can feel like magic in the Apple ecosystem. Features like Handoff allow you to open a document you started editing on another device with the tap of a button, and iCloud takes care of the rest. But this only goes for apps that support Apple’s method, and other services have their own kind of Handoff or Continuity built-in.
You might never miss these features if you’re deeply engrained in Google Workspace or Microsoft Office. You can work on a Google Docs or Microsoft Word document on your phone and then seamlessly have it available on your MacBook when you store your files in the cloud. The same goes for basic photo editing in Google Photos. Everything is neatly synced with the Photos web app in your browser. These sync methods work across Android phones and computers that support any browser. They could make you feel like you don’t miss out compared to folks who have an iPhone and MacBook.
For document scanning, you can use either Google Drive or Microsoft Office. While macOS lets you insert a photo or document from an iPhone’s camera using a simple shortcut, that’s not a game changer if you can use the former two methods on your phone. Apple’s option lets you insert the photo taken on your iPhone into an existing document opened on your Mac. You can achieve the same with Google Drive, Photos, or Microsoft OneDrive with a few extra clicks.
While it’s possible to move files back and forth between Macs and Android phones using a USB-C cable, the best ways to sync files are Google Drive and Microsoft OneDrive. Any cloud service, except iCloud, could serve you well when you want an easy way to sync files across Android and macOS.
AirDrop, tab syncing, and phone calls: Chrome
iPhones and Macs work in tandem when you want to sync your open tabs and send files back and forth between the two. However, the benefits are only available when you use Safari on both. And here, Android, macOS, and Chrome can be an equally good match.
Chrome allows you to sync your browsing history, logins, open tabs, and more across Android and macOS. While it won’t let you call phone numbers from your Mac, Chrome offers an option to send numbers from websites to your phone, which you can then use to place the call. Chrome lets you send links to your phone via the right-click menu and vice versa. This isn’t a system-wide, fully integrated solution, but it’s good enough for the most part.
Clipboard sharing: Clipt
If you want seamless clipboard syncing like Apple offers between iPhone, iPad, and macOS, you won’t find an equally elegant solution for Android and Mac. Android 10 and higher don’t allow background apps to see what you currently have in your clipboard, with keyboards being the only exception. That’s good if you have a Windows computer that offers clipboard syncing through SwiftKey, but we haven’t found a similar solution on Mac.
OneLab’s Clipt might offer a workaround that is good enough. Clipt supports clipboard syncing from Chrome to Android. To get stuff from your phone to show up in your MacBook’s clipboard, you’ll tap an extra button in a permanent notification or a quick settings tile in your notification shade. It’s not as seamless as it could be, but it’s something.
You can also use scrcpy to achieve something similar, but it is a more involved process. You need to be comfortable with the terminal and install both ADB and scrcpy on your MacBook to get started. On your phone, you have to enable developer options and allow debugging, preferably wirelessly. You can then mirror your phone screen to your computer and copy and paste back and forth as you need.
When it comes to clipboard syncing, staying in the Apple ecosystem has its benefits. iPhones and Macs allow for perfectly synchronized clipboards at all times, as long as both devices are connected to the internet.
Living your life as a double agent
As someone with an Android phone and a MacBook, there are a few things that you’ll miss out on. You can’t use an Apple Watch or iPhone to unlock your laptop, and you can’t automatically share Wi-Fi networks across Android and macOS. Things like clipboard sharing aren’t as seamless as they could be.
If you have a Chromebook or a Windows PC, things are better. On Windows, install Windows Your Phone to sync your computer with your Android phone. And on Chromebooks, some integrations are supported natively thanks to the Phone Hub.
