Desktop Mode and implications

lackofhumor

Good morning everyone,

Every once in a while I test the Desktop Mode and I have to say that it has been improved a LOT.

That said, as you ar aware, to use the desktop mode we still need the developer options, which is known to be bad.
In this thread I would like to have a better insight of this topic.

If I understood it correctly, the implications of having these settings on are that many features that have not been battle tested will start to run and this increases the attack surface.

Is it possible that a certain combination of toggles will "emulates" the developer options to be off xcept the very few options a person might need *namely, the three flags of Desktop Mode(.

I am asking these ecause I saw that almost everything is flaggable/settable, plus, many features are already used in the OS outside the developer settings, like the nimations that can be disabled through Accessibility even without Developer Settings enabled.

Did some of you tried to walk tis path already?
Are there other things I should be aware of?

Thank yu for the attention.

Novalissoide

lackofhumor Every once in a while I test the Desktop Mode

You should do this on a second device dedicated for experiments. You could never toggle your way into a stable running with the dev options enabled. They cause new unforseen, exotic conflicts all the time, and if there was any pattern whatsoever in the secondary effects I would tell you about it, so would others.😟

starglider

lackofhumor I think you can turn it on and then turn off Dev Options, and it remains enabled. Some of the dev options are like this; others are not.

That said, given that Desktop Mode is still experimental, there's a reasonable chance that just having it enabled might open up some attack surface. It wouldn't worry much if you're not actively using it, but while it's running, it probably opens up a fair amount of USB attack surface at the very least.