Android's Future Includes A Full Desktop Mode, And This Is What It Might Look Like

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Don’t hold your breath over desktop mode being available anytime soon

Summary

Google is actively developing a desktop mode for Android, seen as a competitor to Samsung DeX.
A setting for the mode was found in Android 16 Beta 3’s developer options; although not functional initially, it has now successfully been enabled, revealing a significantly improved interface with a taskbar, a full-screen app drawer, and support for floating, resizable app windows.
The feature is still a work in progress and not expected to be readily available soon, potentially appearing as a developer option in a future quarterly release or seeing a more complete launch with Android 17.

During spring 2024, Google apparently started taking its plans to develop a Samsung DeX competitor seriously. After rolling out Display Port support in a Feature Drop, followed by testing a desktop interface, Google finally made updates to its dormant desktop mode experience in March by adding a new setting.

“Enable desktop experience features” were found to be tucked away in Android 16 Beta 3’s developer options, intended to let you tweak how Android’s desktop mode works.

Alas, the feature, although present, was not functional in its initial state. Now, however, as reported by credible Android expert Mishaal Rahman in a report for Android Authority, the nascent experience has now successfully been enabled, offering an early glimpse at what Google’s eventual DeX competitor will look like when powered through a Pixel device.

For what it’s worth, Android’s desktop mode is still a work in progress, and what it looks like now might not be the end product. However, the current implementation is clearly more polished than the regular barebones interface you see when you connect a Pixel device to an external display, complete with a taskbar, a status bar, and a windowing experience that’ll be familiar to Pixel Tablet users.

The taskbar’s addition means users can easily access pinned and recently-used applications without having to pull up the app drawer, while the status bar’s addition means that users can see the time, their device’s battery, network connection, notifications, and more at a quick glance.

Desktop Mode’s app drawer takes up the whole screen, compared to the regular desktop interface app drawer, which takes up roughly 3/4th of the screen. The app drawer’s search bar now also doubles as a universal search tool, allowing you to search not just for apps, but also web, settings, contacts, the web, and more. It also highlights Google Lens and mic icons, identical to the Pixel launcher’s icons.

Don’t hold your breath over desktop mode being available anytime soon

Current desktop interface (left), upcoming Android desktop mode (right)

Similar to Samsung DeX, or regular desktop operating systems for that matter, Android’s desktop mode will let users multitask with multiple open apps at once, which can be snapped in place, resized, and dragged around as desired. Elsewhere, with apps like Chrome and Google Keep, users will be able to drag and drop content between windows.

Rahman suggests that work on Android’s desktop mode isn’t near completion, and users should expect it to land with Android 16. There’s a chance that Google will make it available with a future build, potentially a quarterly release. If that happens, full desktop mode functionality will likely remain hidden behind developer options. Alternatively, Google could decide to further polish the experience and release it with next year’s Android 17.

Google could also decide on teasing the eventual mode at its upcoming I/O or Android Show, though we’re not holding our breath over it.