Android device owners, now you can control your desktop from across the room — or the world

Google released its Chrome Remote Desktop app for Android yesterday, enabling the Android crowd to access their Mac or PC from afar. The app is a mobile extension of Chrome’s remote desktop screen-sharing service, which has enabled machine control from Chromebooks and Chrome browsers since it arrived in 2011.

First-time users will need to install a helper application to get things going (and set up a Google account, if they don’t already have one), but then they can just boot up the Android app and get going.

An iOS version of the Chrome Remote Desktop app is coming later this year, Google promised in a blog post announcing the Android app release.

Google’s official app joins a bevy of remote desktop apps already available, including Microsoft’s Remote Desktop apps, which facilitate remote access to PCs from Android or iOS devices.