Windows SideShow is a feature introduced in Windows Vista that enabled a display to receive data from an associated machine. Windows SideShow allowed a PC to do many new things — many for which we use a smart phone nowadays — and these could all be accomplished by means of an external or an internal display associated with the machine; many of these were ahead of their time. By proxy, Windows SideShow also allowed smart phones and other devices to do things that were not available before.

With Windows SideShow, we could use smart phones to remotely log off, restart, put to sleep, or shut down a PC. A handful of strange apps from the App Store or Play Store support this. but the dearth of options is apparent in that some sites recommended using remote access apps such as TeamViewer for this functionality. With Windows SideShow, we could view details of our PCs on our smart phones that are just really unheard of today (such as viewing the operating system uptime of a PC or the running processes of a PC from a smart phone).