Microsoft announces Project Rome update with Android support

Feb 9, 2017 10:05 GMT  ·  By

Microsoft announced during the Windows Developer Day that Project Rome is being updated with new capabilities, including support for Android apps for the Shared experiences feature available in Windows 10.

Shared experiences is a feature that was implemented in Windows 10 Anniversary Update as Continue App Experiences and renamed in the Creators Update which allows users to open apps on Windows PCs and then continue from where they left off on mobile devices.

With today’s Project Rome announcement, Shared experiences will support Android apps as well, as long as the user installs the necessary Microsoft apps and logs in with the same Microsoft account.

“Rome’s cross-device services make it easy for users to continue an activity within your app as they move from one device to another, including Android devices,” Microsoft explains.

Shared experiences in Windows 10

The Rome SDK for Android brings cross-device experiences on Android devices, and developers need to implement this feature into their own apps. At this point, Project Rome supports two different scenarios, namely Windows client to Windows host and Android client to Windows host.

In both cases, a PC running Windows 10 is needed, but with today’s announcement, Microsoft allows not only Windows devices to act as clients, such as Windows phones, but also Android phones and tablets.

“This feature, consisting of API sets on multiple development platforms, allows an app on a client (local) device to interact with apps and services on a host (remote) device that is signed in with or receptive to the Microsoft Account (MSA) on the client device. This allows developers to program cross-device experiences that are centered around user tasks rather than devices,” Microsoft says.

Shared experiences is a feature that’s already baked in the existing Windows 10 Creators Update and users can set it up from Settings app > System > Shared experiences. There’s an option to “let me open apps on other devices, send messages between them and invite others to use apps with me,” and settings to use this feature with my devices only or everyone nearby.