AirStream

While video watching was once solely the domain of movie theaters and living room televisions, the growing world of technology allows people to enjoy their favorite TV and movies wherever they happen to be. And while there's a number of websites and apps like Netflix and YouTube that allow you to watch their content while on the go, they often require subscriptions and only provide you with access to whatever library the service in question offers. AirStream lets you play any videos from your computer on your phone, making it a great choice for sharing personal or family videos and accessing the digital data you have stored remotely. It can also serve as a more interactive virtual remote controller, letting you stream videos through your Chromecast or other streaming dongle or box without having to seat yourself in front of you computer. AirStream isn't the first app that turns computers into a remote video entertainment server. Programs like Plex were designed around this principle. But AirStream sets itself apart on virtue of how easy it is to use. All you have to do is install AirStream on both your phone and your computer using the same account. Users do need to set up file sharing on all the devices they're connecting, but this is a relatively painless process, and it's an unfortunate requirement for all apps of this variety. There's no limit to the amount of devices you connect via AirStream, so you could hypothetically have a video collection as large as your imagination. And since all of these drives connect directly into your phone, navigation is a breeze. A simple tabbed interface in AirStream allows you to browse your libraries. Your favorites section keeps track of your most watched videos. Drives allows you to access information from any connected hard drives neatly listed out for you, while Desktop lets you pull up any videos from your computer's desktop. While this functionally works just the same as Drive, saving videos directly to your desktop can simplify the process of finding the videos that you most readily want to access. There's also the ability to stream videos that have been stored via cloud services. AirStream also supports music. There's no need to worry about all of your files being scattered across multiple devices. Through their playlist function, you can combine your favorite songs into a single list regardless of where they happen to be stored. You can either create playlists using the app itself or import playlists from existing services like iTunes or Windows Player. AirStream also supports photo sharing. Your photo galleries are split into pictures from your phone, your drives, and your favorites list. Favorites can pull together pictures from any source connected to your network. For families and users with media split across multiple devices. AirStream is a very useful organizational tool, and a way to broadcast your media through your phone or a streaming device without having to scour your sources for what you're searching for.