Robert Triggs / Android Authority
TL;DR
- Windows Phone Link on PC has lost its phone unlink function.
- Microsoft appears to be unaware of the problem.
- Users now have to sign out of their Phone Link account to remove a phone.
You can connect your phone to your PC with Microsoft’s pre-installed Phone Link app. It will allow you to view notifications, make phone calls, and use mobile apps all from your computer. But if you don’t want your phone to forever be connected to your PC, you may want to avoid setting it up as users report having difficulty unlinking their phones.
First reported by XDA Developers, it appears the Windows Phone Link app recently lost some of its functionality. Previously, when you connected your phone to the app, you could remove it by clicking on the three dots next to the handset’s name in the Devices section. Now, however, users are reporting on the Microsoft Feedback Hub that the three-dot option is no longer available. We can also confirm that the option to remove is no longer there on our PCs either.
At the moment, it’s unclear if the issue is intentional or not. A Microsoft engineer tried resolving complaints by posting the usual removal steps on the Feedback Hub, suggesting the company may not even be aware of the issue.
Fortunately, there’s another trick you can use to unlink your phone if necessary. You just have to sign out of the account you used to set up Phone Link. The only problem with this is it will unlink all of your connected phones if you have more than one linked.
We have reached out to Microsoft for comment. This article will be updated when new information is available.
