Android’s next big feature turns your phone into a desktop

A beta build of Android 16 contains an early version of Google’s new Android Desktop Mode that, in the future, could let users simply plug their smartphone into a monitor and use it like a laptop or desktop computer.

The new feature was shared by Android tinkerer Mishaal Rahman reporting for Android Authority. Rahman manually enabled Android Desktop Mode under developer options on his Google Pixel 8 Pro running the latest Android 16 beta. After plugging it into a USB-C compatible monitor, it immediately displays a PC-like interface on the external display, as you can see as in his video:

Android Desktop Mode puts Android’s status bar on the top so you can see your Wi-Fi and signal strength, and there’s a taskbar on the bottom that lets you pin apps for easy access. The taskbar also gives you a Windows Start Menu-style app drawer, and you get access to Android’s native navigation buttons on the right end of the taskbar. Apps run in windowed modes that look a lot like the experience on Android tablets, but you also get Windows PC-like abilities such as snapping windows to the left and right of the screen.

Last year, Rahman found an early version of Google’s desktop experience didn’t do much more than let you drop a resizable windowed app onto a bigger screen. In March, Google upped its abilities to include a display placement management setting that lets you drag boxes to arrange your mobile screen and monitor so you can make it easier to navigate your cursor between them, much like the display arrangement settings you’ll find on desktop operating systems.

Rahman says Desktop Mode might not be ready at launch for Android 16, which is expected to launch this spring. It could come later in a quarterly update or even as part of Android 17, which won’t likely come until 2026.