Is Google bringing Android to desktop?

immasleep

Browsing Chromium Gerrit, you can find mentions of desktop-optimised Android builds which targets both ARM64 and x64:

They are also making changes which implies desktop-optimised Android is different from usual Android builds:

Moreover, they are experimenting with bringing extensions support to desktop-optimised builds:

Given recent news that ChromeOS is moving to Android stack, we could assume Google might be bringing Android to desktop in one way or another. I hope this is true, and I hope one day we'd see GrapheneOS for desktop as well.

longshots

immasleep

I hope this is true, and I hope one day we'd see GrapheneOS for desktop as well.

Don't hold your breath. That's a pretty big leap.

AlphaElwedritsch

immasleep I hope this is true, and I hope

hope dies last

secrec

They've been hinting at this for well over a decade now.

immasleep

secrec I left android after kitkat and returned only with android 13, so I don't really know if there was any effort during that time, but now:

google announces it's killing chromeos as it is and moving to android stack
engineers mention "android desktop experience effort" in chromium reviews
chromium for android desktop is a separate build with features incompatible with regular android (extensions), suggesting android desktop is a different build
chromium spins up infrastructure to deliver arm64/x64 builds of chromium android desktop, suggesting android desktop will work on both architectures (although it's possible x64 build is for simulation only)

I think there are enough signals suggesting google (at least at the moment) committing time and money to work towards android desktop, and chromeos situation suggests we could actually see it in one form or another. Personally, I expect something to play with by android 16-17 rollout.

secrec

immasleep There is already something to "play with". Freeform desktop mode has been an experimental option in android (enable in developer options) for a very very long time. They've been talking like this for years. One day they're planning to kill Android and replace it with chrome. Next is to change to a BSD licensed kernel instead of Linux (which is a very unlikely scenario because there is too much burden on hardware vendors to take this route), now its kill chrome in favor of Android. It all means absolutely NOTHING until after it actually happens.