for some reason it's working again without doing any changes, maybe it's the new update 1212 today fixed the problem

Experimented with this again today, after the new update. The problem persisted. I could not get it to work. Keep in mind, this had been working quite reliably just a couple of weeks ago. So I posted my report in this thread, just a few minutes ago, about the problem persisting.

Immediately after posting that reply, I decided to plug in one more time. And, the mouse cursor moved over to the desktop! No other changes were made. Now, that is the strangest thing I've seen to date.

Rather acquainted with compromised devices. That's one of the reasons I experimented with desktop mode in the first place. Now I am suspecting the device itself. I guess I have a couple old phones lying around so I'll test reliability with another OS.

Spent a little time experimenting while preparing a meal and eating. The problem persists on the original device, except for that one occasion mentioned above. After reboot, I cannot get it to work again. Mouse cursor remains locked on phone screen. Very, very strange report, I know.

Turns out I don't have many desktop mode capable devices lying around, so I'll see if I can dig up something, or borrow a device, within a few days to try again.

I was surprised to see the thread, as I've seen the cursor on the external screen only once. once one start to treat those desktop rumours as just blah-blah, it's easier to make a decision to switch back to good old DeX for a year (or two) till AOSP makes it to a level of DeX'2022

20 days later

Update. Have played with this a bit now. I can say, something has definitely changed.

Prior to my report, mouse at least was usable on external screen very reliably. (Desktop mode itself not exactly refined, of course, but at least the mouse worked every time.)

Now, since my report, mouse function on external display is extremely unreliable. Most of the time it's not moving over to the external display. Occasionally, maybe 10% of the time, it does. Very weird.

A reliable and usable desktop mode would be quite the promotion for android and graphene os. I guess not everyone wants that option to be available. As of today, it isn't. I'll continue trying to use it, when it's trustworthy. Obviously until then for regular desktop activities I'm sticking with another, more secure platform.

17 days later

I can confirm as well on Pixel 9. Enabling "floating windows" & "floating windows on secondary display" (desktop mode and any reference to it is gone) results in a black screen with the "app drawer circle" at the bottom right and me not able to interact with the environment on the external screen at all. Didn't test with a keyboard but the bt mouse (Logitech Triathlon M720 if it matters) cursor remained at the device's screen

Quite unusable I'd say

I discovered that if you go to Settings > Connected devices > External Display and change rotation to 180 and back again, the mouse will appear on the extended screen

    pideco6441
    I'm putting this under "improvements" because there used to be no good way to move the cursor to the desktop after a screen lock, so hey.

      22 days later

      I'm also having this problem. Thanks for the screen rotation trick. I want to be able to use desktop mode for work so can't keep doing that all the time.