You need two things.
In Gnome, you need GSConnect.
On the device, you need KDE Connect.
GSConnect
GSConnect is a Gnome Extension. If you have not already started using Gnome Extensions, read this. Long story shory: you can easily enable Gnome Extensions from a web browser, and that’s super handy. In this case, you’ll want to enable GSConnect. It’ll look like this:
Wow look at all my browser tabs. Cool, right? (Can you still trust me, now that you know?)
Nothing will look immediately different. You will, however, notice when you pull down the top right:
“Mobile Devices” now appears. (And look at all that stuff you know about my laptop now! Wow!) At this point (prior to installing KDE Connect on your phone / device), turning it on will do nothing of consequence, but you should turn it on, so that you can connect when we get KDE Connect running for you. So let’s move on to installing on your phone.
KDE Connect
Play Store / search KDE Connect / install.
Open KDE Connect.
It will discover the name of the machine running GSConnect. Click connect.
Over in the Gnome Environment, you should get a notification that something is trying to connect. You should accept this.
(When I first tried, I had a problem with the notification. It would disappear almost instantly, before I could accept. I found this page about the problem. But then I can’t remember what I did to fix it. Sorry.) ((I might have reinstalled or something simple like that. Shrug. I wasn’t expecting to write this article, but then my wife wanted to connect her Android phone to her Dell XPS 13, and I realised this is a good topic to write about. But alas, I hadn’t taken notes on my experience…. Live and learn, am-i-right?))
Once Connected
Check this out:
(Guess what kind of cheap phone I have?) And look at all the stuff you can now do. This is pretty powerful business. You’ll need to grant permission for Gnome to do stuff to and on the phone, and vice versa. All quite self-explanatory.
You can set things up so that, when connected, phone notifications will show up in your Gnome notifications area. You can also use the phone screen to move the mouse on your computer, which is fun so show off at parties (but I can’t find any other reason for this function, and, yes, I attend strange parties).
I’ll note: if you connect to “Messaging”, you’ll be connecting to the default SMS service on your phone. For example, I’ve been using Signal, and nothing I sent after I switched showed up on Messaging. AND (!) all my deleted messages showed up as well. (This is worth a second article some day….)
That’s it.
Now go.
Enjoy.