First Look at Google’s Unfinished DeX-Like Desktop Mode for Android

For years, if you’ve wanted to plug your Android telephone into a show and get thing that felt remotely similar a desktop, your lone enactment has fundamentally been Samsung DeX. It offers a due multi-window interface, a taskbar, and the quality to usage your telephone similar a PC. Meanwhile, Android’s offering for different devices has been highly lacking. That appears to beryllium changing.

Last year, Google yet allowed Pixel phones to mirror their displays to outer screens. Then, earlier this year, Google was moving connected a developer enactment for desktop mode. Now, heavy dives into the Android codification are revealing Google's ambitions for a much robust desktop environment, presently dubbed "Desktop View." This isn't conscionable a tweaked interface for tablets; it's designed to enactment erstwhile you link your telephone to an outer display, giving you a layout that's acold much conducive to getting enactment done with a keyboard and mouse.

“Desktop View” includes features specified arsenic a persistent taskbar, overmuch similar you'd find connected Windows oregon ChromeOS. This barroom volition reportedly springiness you speedy entree to your pinned apps and amusement your precocious utilized ones, making switching betwixt tasks overmuch smoother than the modular Android caller apps view. More importantly, the strategy is being built to grip aggregate apps moving successful resizable, freeform windows. You tin seemingly besides resistance and driblet contented betwixt windows if the apps enactment it. This is important for getting that existent PC-like multitasking experience.

While this aboriginal desktop mode is showing important progress, it's important to temper expectations slightly. First, it's inactive intelligibly a enactment successful progress, tucked distant successful developer options successful existent beta builds. Right now, it's fundamentally a modified mentation of Android's windowing mode that you tin presently spot connected tablets and foldables. So, it’s improbable that we’ll spot this arsenic a finished merchandise successful Android 16.

However, the information that Google is actively processing these features and gathering upon the basal windowing capabilities introduced successful earlier Android versions is simply a bully sign. Google has besides been moving connected bringing external show tools to Android–things similar the quality to rearrange displays and determination a rodent betwixt displays. It feels similar Google is yet acceptable to connection an alternate to DeX for those who don’t privation a Samsung phone, turning your telephone into a existent pouch computer.

Source: Android Authority