When you leave home, it’s likely that at some point you’ve forgotten to shut down your computer, or you were in the middle of a download and didn’t have time to wait, so you’d only be able to turn it off when you got back. To solve this problem, many people install remote software, allowing them to shut down remotely even when away, but in the future, that might not be necessary. According to a foreign media discovery, Microsoft is currently developing power control features such as remote shutdown, restart, and sleep for the Android version of “Link to Windows,” meaning that in the future, you may only need a few taps on your Android phone to remotely shut down or restart a Windows 11 PC.
Image source: Windows Latest
Forgot to shut down your computer? Windows 11 may “possibly” let you remotely shut down, restart, and sleep from your phone in the future—the code has already been unearthed.
According to a report from foreign media Windows LatestThey found a batch of unused strings related to the RemoteControlManager component while decompiling the Android version of the “Link to Windows” APK. Additionally, in the debug logs generated for the August 25 version, they also discovered two feature flags, isRemotePcControlsV2Enabled and experimentEnabled, both currently disabled.
Image source: Windows Latest
The strings in the code include three basic power operations: “Restart”, “Shut down”, and “Sleep”, along with two additional options: “Update and restart” and “Update and shut down”. These five commands correspond to the options you see when you click the power button in the Windows Start menu.
Image source: Windows Latest
In addition, there is a confirmation dialog and a data-loss warning: “A restart is needed to finish an update on your PC. Any unsaved work in open apps from your PC will be lost.” It is understood that Microsoft designed two different dialog boxes—one for ordinary shutdown/restart and one for pending updates—with somewhat different warning text.
This design isn’t superfluous, because the cost of accidentally touching your phone is far higher than making a mistake at a computer.
Image source: Windows Latest
Regarding the sleep option, the code hint says: “After it’s asleep, it will be disconnected from this device. You need to go to your PC to wake it up.” This means that once the computer goes to sleep, the connection with the phone is lost, and you have to go back to the computer to wake it up. In other words, it’s a one-way street: the phone can remotely put the computer to sleep, but it can’t wake it up.
Notably, this remote control feature also appears to be tied to Windows Update status. The two distinct commands mentioned earlier—”Update and restart” and “Update and shut down”—along with the dedicated warning dialog shown during updates, all suggest that Microsoft intends for the remote control interface on the phone to be aware of Windows Update status, rather than merely sending out a shutdown or restart command.
Of course, we can’t say for sure that this new feature will actually happen, since it’s only been dug out from the Android app’s code, but at least there’s something to look forward to.
Looking at Microsoft’s moves over the past few years, it has finally begun to steadily strengthen the integration between phones and “Windows PCs”—from the earliest notification and message sync, to file transfer and clipboard, to remote lock in 2025, and then the power control that was only recently uncovered. This is undoubtedly a great thing for users.
Source: KOCPC Chinese