How To Send Links From Google Chrome To iPhone

I’ve been asked this question many times by iOS device owners on quickly sharing data between their desktop browser and Mobile Safari on the iPhone, particularly from Google Chrome. There are numerous tools and apps available for that – some paid and some free – depending on the feature set you’re looking at. Then there are the big names like Evernote and Handoff which can share much more than merely URLs and text. However, they really did not satisfy for two main reasons: firstly, I did not want to spend money to have this kind of functionality on my device (I know that Evernote is free), and secondly, I did not want a solution that would add to the list of services I regularly need to manage (that’s where Evernote lost). Hence, a better solution has to exist, I kept telling myself, and that came in the form of the a extension for Google Chrome.

Read on after the break for more on this.

To begin with sending URLs directly from computer to phone, download the Google chrome extention Site to Phone and install it. Once installed, an iPhone icon will appear in Google Chrome next to the address bar. Site to Phone requires you to create an account before you can use it, but it’s free and quite easy (took me less than a couple of minutes to set it up). Once the account is set up, you can click the iPhone icon in Chrome to send the link directly from computer to phone (iPhone or any other phone, since Site to Phone works with all smartphone platforms).

So now the question arises about how you’ll be setting up the reception point on your iPhone. That’s as easy as it gets – browse to www.sitetophone.com on your iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad; login to your account and use the Add to Homescreen feature on your iOS device to place a bookmarklet on your homescreen. Next time you want to send something from Google Chrome to iPhone, hit the extension button in Google Chrome and launch the bookmarklet from your iPhone’s homescreen. The page you were browsing in Chrome will be instantly viewable on your iPhone.

There’s a lot more to Site to Phone than just sending URLs and links. You can, for instance, send Mail, Maps, YouTube and Phone links to your iPhone and they’ll open in their corresponding native apps instead of Mobile Safari. Furthermore, you can also send text selections and images via the right-click menu in Google Chrome, making it all easier. Since Site to Phone is a web application, your transfer history also remains stored should you need it later, along with syncing with multiple phones and instances of Google Chrome (wherever you set the service up with the same credentials).

The best part of using Site to Phone is that it works over mobile data (2G and 3G both), so your PC/Mac and iPhone don’t even have to be on the same WiFi network.

Site to Phone is great free service that makes transferring links from computer to phone a breeze. It’s easy to set up and easier to use, and I have yet to find an alternative that works across such a wide variety of platforms. Know something better? Leave a comment for us and we’ll be sure to check it out.

For more iPhone goodness, check out our Top 50 iPhone App Recommendations.