Using iMessage with Windows 11 is coming in mid-May thanks to Phone Link

First launched as the confusingly named Your Phone app, Microsoft’s Phone Link allows Android phones to integrate with Windows. You can access files, send/receive texts or calls, and control your phone’s music without so much as laying a finger on your phone. However, this has only worked on Android phones, not iPhones.

That changes in May 2023. At that time, Microsoft will roll out Phone Link iPhone support, allowing iPhone users to take advantage of many of the same features Android users have been enjoying. You’ll need the Link to Windows app for iOS to see this functionality.

Consequently, this will include iMessage support — at least kind of. Although Phone Link will be able to send and receive text messages from iPhones, it will not support most iMessage features. This includes group chats, images/videos, and even conversation histories. This feature will also not work unless your iPhone is actively connected to the Windows 11 machine via Bluetooth. In other words, it will be very rudimentary.

Still, being able to at least send/receive texts on a Windows machine might be the final push someone needs to use Windows instead of macOS. Anecdotally, many iPhone users out there don’t want to use macOS but stick with it because they enjoy being able to text from their laptops. Now, Phone Link iPhone support means that barrier is crumbling away.

Of course, it is unlikely Microsoft would ever be able to fully replicate iMessage on Windows, at least when compared to macOS. But this announcement is just the beginning. This feature will likely get more powerful as the years go on, just as Phone Link has gotten better and better for Android phones.