The beta version of Android 16 contains an early version of Google’s new Android desktop mode, which in the future will allow users to simply connect their smartphone to a monitor and use it as a laptop or desktop computer.
The new feature was shared by Android developer Mishaal Rahman, who reported it on the Android Authority website. Rahman manually enabled Android Desktop Mode in the developer options on his Google Pixel 8 Pro running the latest Android 16 beta.
It is similar to Samsung’s useful DeX feature, which allows you to connect your Galaxy smartphone to a monitor to work in a window.
In Android desktop mode, the Android status bar is displayed at the top so you can see Wi-Fi and signal strength, and there is a taskbar at the bottom that allows you to pin apps for easy access. The taskbar also contains a Windows Start menu-style app drawer, and you access the Android navigation buttons located at the right end of the taskbar. Programs run in windowed modes, which are very similar to those on Android tablets, but you also get features similar to Windows PCs, such as snapping windows to the left and right of the screen.
Last year, Rahman discovered that an early version of Google Desktop didn’t do much more than allow you to drag and drop resizable windowed applications to a larger screen. In March, Google expanded its capabilities by adding a display layout control setting that allows you to drag blocks to position a mobile device’s screen and monitor to make it easier to navigate the cursor between them, similar to the display layout settings on desktop operating systems.
Rahman says that desktop mode may not be ready for the launch of Android 16, which is expected this spring. It may come later in a quarterly update or even as part of Android 17, which is likely to be released no earlier than 2026.
