Android’s desktop mode for phones is taking shape, and it looks familiar
The latest beta build of Android 16 has given us a glimpse of the next-gen desktop mode that Google is currently developing for Android phones.
ShanonG
Tushar Mehta / Digital Trends
Google’s mobile operating system comes with a hidden desktop mode that opens on an external screen, mimicking what you would get from a computing interface. However, it is buried within the developer mode, and it’s far from polished to get any serious work done.
The company, however, continues building a next-gen experience for Android’s native desktop mode. The overarching idea is to turn your phone and tablet into a desktop computing device. Mishaal Rahman, over at Android Authority, was able to enable this mode in the latest beta build of Android 16, though he warns that it might not be ready for the stable release in the coming months.
What’s changing?
The biggest difference is that the in-development desktop experience features a full-fledged taskbar at the bottom and a status bar, as well. The current barebones version shows an app tray tethered to the left edge, lacks proper tiling controls, and doesn’t allow keyboard shortcuts, either.
In the version that is currently in development at Google, the apps are pinned alongside the lower edge of the screen, while the three core navigation controls are positioned near the lower right corner.
Rahman notes that users will be able to resize, move, and tile app windows “just like on desktop operating systems.” This approach also opens the doors for dragging and dropping content across two app windows.
The overarching theme for this desktop environment is familiar for two reasons. First, it looks almost identical to how Android handles app windows and taskbar docking on Android tablets.
Chrome OS, is that you?
Away from Google’s vanilla Android experience, Samsung has been offering something called DeX for years. It works natively on tablets just fine, but provides an even better experience when connected to an external display.
Desktop mode triggered by the Red Magic Nova tablet. Nadeem Sarwar / Digital TrendsI even used the DeX mode driven by the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 5 as my primary workstation for a couple of weeks. Even smaller players like Red Magic offer a fantastic gaming-focused desktop launcher experience running atop Android roots.
Another reason the upcoming Android desktop mode looks familiar is because of its resemblance to Chrome OS. It’s good to see Google keeping the UI design and experience coherent, a strategy that Apple has executed beautifully for years.
Interestingly, the outlet recently reported that Google might merge Chrome OS with Android OS down the road, creating a unified experience. The company is yet to say anything about those plans, but Google could make some announcements about those plans at its I/O event later this month.
Please enable Javascript to view this content
Nadeem is a tech and science journalist who started reading about cool smartphone tech out of curiosity and soon started…
Android 16 will add handy productivity feature for desktop workers
It looks like Android 16 will add a feature that lets you screen record what you're doing on an external monitor. This is an expansion of a current Android 15 feature that enables you to screenshot external monitors connected to Android devices.
Spotted by Android Authority, Android 16 Beta 3 includes a third option in the screen recorder menu: "Record HDMI Screen." It works just the same as recording your device display, encoding and saving the resulting video in the same way as well.
Turns out, Google hasn’t forgotten about Android desktop mode
Did you know that Google’s Android has a desktop mode? It’s true, and you may hear more about it in the coming months. This mode has gained some new features in Android 16 Beta 3, which indicates that Google might be trying to jumpstart the mode to make it more like Windows or macOS but for a mobile device.
With Android Desktop Mode, some Android smartphones and tablets can utilize a desktop-like interface when connected to an external display, keyboard, and mouse. This may sound like a helpful tool, but, admittingly, Google hasn’t shown it much love in recent years.
Android is prepping notification summaries. Let’s hope it’s better than iOS
So far, Google has done an admirable job of putting generative AI tools on Android smartphones. Earlier today, it announced further refinements to how users interact with Gemini AI assistant and extended a few freebies, too. Now, Google seems to be chasing an AI tool that has worked poorly on iPhones.
The folks over at AndroidAuthority took a peek at the code of Android 13’s latest beta update and found the mention of“notification summaries.” To enable this feature, users will have to flick a dedicated toggle under the Notifications dashboard of the Settings app.
A thoughtful approach for Android
Thankfully, users will be able to disable notifications for apps that they don’t want to see summarized notifications. An analysis of the strings suggests that the feature will only summarize notifications that host conversational content, such as messages, and no other app alerts.
This is a thoughtful strategy, and will likely avoid the mess that came from summarized notifications within the Apple Intelligence bundle. Notification summaries are a useful way to catch up on the chatter in a buzzy group, like friends or workplace chats.
