Your Pixel can now double up as a full Android PC with nothing more than a USB-C cable
(www.androidauthority.com)
So sort of like the Continuum mode that Windows Phones had, like, ten years ago?
this post was submitted on 04 Mar 2026
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Like desktop mode on Librem5 in 2020, convergence on PinePhone from 2021, or Samsung Dex from a few years ago, too.
And every Ubuntu Touch device with support for external monitors for the last ten years or so. Here's a demonstration running on a Fairphone 4.
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Oh the Motorola Atrix from like, 2014? I still have the lapdock. Used it with an original RPi for a while to make a terrible laptop.
Wiki says the model is from 2011, and all that functionality was implemented on Android 2.3.x, impressive! Google is only 14 versions behind.
Literally every Samsung Android phone has come with their Dex desktop for like 10 years too.
I fucking hate Google at this point. They're just an even shittier version of apple now. Locking down their shit for no reason, and claiming decades old innovations are actually new and theirs.
Brother, Apple wrote that playbook 🤣
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I have a 9a running Graphene and with a "usb C laptop dock" I can use it in "desktop mode", but I would warn that it is still EXTREMELY buggy and finnicky.
Still neat though.
You're probably not on the latest release then.
I tried it a few weeks ago. It didn't feel particularly buggy, but it was pretty slow/sluggish. Not the apps themselves, but moving and resizing windows. Basic UI stuff. Just felt like it was still very much a WIP.
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Anyone know if this works with GrapheneOS? I haven’t tested this in a very long time and then I was on stock. Android.
It does in fact work with GOS. I don't believe this build has been released yet though so you likely still need to toggle it on in the dev settings.
I last tried out the beta version of it on Graphene a couple of months back and it was rough. In fairness though, I was mostly using it to figure out how to use it to install a full fat Linux distro, which is probably a niche use.
My phone's just updated, so I'll give it another spin when I get home tonight and report back.
It works fine enough. It's not going to replace my desktop PC any time soon but it helps a lot for anything involving word processing/documents, as well as gaming on TVs and monitors.
It works okay, but not great for me. I toss my phone on one of my old laptops docking station at work, but some apps like to force a shit resolution. It is pretty neat having them in moveable windows though.
Have you used the latest version?
I haven't used it in the past few months, I'll definitely give it another try though.
Edit: Oh, yeah this is a bit different. I like the new prompt asking if it's extended or desktop. I will definitely have to play with it a bit more, I had tossed it to the back of my brain as a 'well it exists' feature.
And are there apps for normal desktop office work?
I'm surely not gonna use Google docs or Microsoft's cloud clobber.
Any apps that are available on Android can be used with desktop mode, including Collabora and OnlyOffice. I assume there will be variable levels of optimization though since this is still so new.
Edit: Forgot to mention that you should also be able to run linux apps https://www.androidauthority.com/run-desktop-linux-apps-on-android-how-to-3586539/
So new, as in, it has been available forever, just not on google phones. But every other manufacturer has done it at one point or another in the last ten years if not more.
Yeah I'm not very familiar with the android landscape since everything that's not GrapheneOS is a total shitshow. Sounds like app optimization may be less of a concern than I anticipated, that's great
I had video out via MHL back in like 2013 and a usable desktop environment on an HTC M7 or something like that. Haven't had a phone that could do anything similar since, and it's kind of wild with how much more powerful phones are these days that desktop modes aren't more common. I would love to not have to carry a laptop around when my phone is more than powerful enough for what I do for work.