Pixel 8 desktop mode guide and personal experience

Peortogs

Hey All, anyone get mirroring or desktop mode to work with a pixel tablet? Seeing a lot of stuff about pixel 8.

Thanks in advance

de0u

Peortogs I believe the Tablet is internally a 7, not an 8, and thus lacks the hardware.

Peortogs

de0u
Very helpful, ty!

Do you happen to know what the biggest screen Pixel phone and most updated is that is supported? 9a?

nandohyphen1

Peortogs Do you happen to know what the biggest screen Pixel phone and most updated is that is supported?

Pixel 9 Pro Fold. It had an 8" screen

Peortogs

nandohyphen1 what if you dont want a folder?

nandohyphen1

Peortogs Then you'd want the Pixel 9 Pro or Pro XL. 9 Pro has a 6.7" screen and Pro XL has a 6.8" screen.

Peortogs

nandohyphen1 thanks a ton, not super familiar with the line up. New to the pixel lines, have used chromebook before. Ill have to look into those pro models and see what the difference is in price.

nandohyphen1

Peortogs no problem! The Pixel 10 series is being released this month so if you wait until around the middle of this month I'm sure you'll get a great deal on the 9 series.

Peortogs

Great to hear! Thanks! I bought the tablet thinking i could use it like my ipad desktop set up but was nieve to how far behind apple android is in that area. Still love graphene on the pixel tablet, but ideally a phone plugged into keyboard mouse monitor to browse, word process, and spread sheet should cover 85% of my normal needs. Would love to get down to a single device.

nandohyphen1

Peortogs I'm using a Pixel 6a with GrapheneOS and I love it. I know its not the newest phone, but it works for me and I prefer smaller phones so it was a good choice for me.

LeslieFH

Peortogs

Pixel 8 also has support for desktop mode and is cheaper than 9, you could get an 8 Pro for your purposes and it would work fine, and for the same price as a Pixel 9 you could probably get a device with more internal memory.

mmobder

LeslieFH @nandohyphen1 @Peortogs may I ask you to please move your a bit drifted "device recommendation" discussion into a separate topic so those who are subscribed to "desktop mode" aren't spammed with irrelevant notifs?

other8026

Yes, please keep the discussion on topic. I will leave the posts here for now unless the discussion goes off topic again.

areaman

I am curious if anyone knows if the 1920x1024 resolusion limit is software or hardware (Pixel 8 Pro). It looks pretty bad on a 27 inch 4k screen. Alternatively, if you know where to look for datasheets on internal components or shcematics, that would be awesome.

Carpool7341

I have this weird bug where the top bar that's supposed to be on the monitor screen to resize fullsized windows somehow got moved to the phone screen... Therefore, I cannot exit fullscreen apps on desktop mode. On the other hand, I can resize windows on my phone screen as if it was the secondary monitor. This only applies when desktop mode is enabled and "enable freeform windows on secondary display" is enabled.

Bimmy

Carpool7341

When I dared to test the last time (already on Android 16) I too hat this problem that once I maximize an App, the menu bar disappeared and the app become forever stuck in maximized mode.
Whatever keyboard shortcut I tried, nothing helped. Even the "task manager" and up-swiping the app did not help; next time I reopened the app it outright started in the broken maximized mode.

If anyone knows a trick to unmaximize windows, I'd be really grateful.

This bug -- besides the fact that desktop mode required notorious desktop mode - was the reason why I gave it up a second time.

Carpool7341

Also, it seems that the config in the developer options on GOS is different from stock Pixel. The proper config option on stock Pixel is "enable desktop experience features" vs on GOS it's "enable desktop mode" and "enable freeform windows on secondary display", both of which need to be enabled. It seems that the new desktop mode isn't activated on GOS.

de0u

Carpool7341 It seems that the config in the developer options on GOS is different from stock Pixel.

Yes.

Carpool7341 The proper config option on stock Pixel is "enable desktop experience features" vs on GOS it's "enable desktop mode" and "enable freeform windows on secondary display", both of which need to be enabled.

There is no such thing as propriety when it comes to developer options. Each OS has its own, though they largely overlap. And none of the developer options are things that people are expected to use in daily life or depend on the operation of.

Desktop mode doesn't fully work yet. When it is believed to be working it will move out of developer options! Until then it will continue to not work correctly in various ways.

Bimmy

Starting with a correction:

Bimmy This bug -- besides the fact that desktop mode required notorious desktop mode - was the reason

(italics mine)

The second "desktop mode" actually meant "developer options".

de0u
Agree. Currently, it appears it's so utterly buggy that it's hard to do anything productive at all.

Luckily huge improvements of desktop mode could come soon. Atm, they are part of Android 16 QPR 1 beta, cp. https://yewtu.be/watch?v=Y4V2xtlHvjw for a demonstration.

I wonder whether these improvements

can be completely ported to GOS? (Hopefully it doesn't depend on some proprietary pixel code.)
would justify moving them to a regular toggle in Settings and not longer gate behind notorious developer options?

Carlos-Anso

Bimmy If anyone knows a trick to unmaximize windows, I'd be really grateful

It is the most annoying issue with the way that desktop mode currently functions. It is experimental/under development so have to expect issues. Thankfully there is a work around.

Open the recents screen on the phone. Long press on the icon at the top of the screen for the offending app, select 'Desktop' from the menu.

The other useful trick is changing rotation of the phone screen to get the mouse pointer to reappear on external screen. You find its vanished after the screen locks.

de0u

Bimmy I wonder whether [...]

We'll see! It is not unheard of for a feature to show up in a QPR beta and then not ship for a long time.

I think a good way to think about it is: after Google ships it to production (meaning: not in a beta, not in developer options), wait one month to see what happens on the GrapheneOS side. (I write this despite believing that there will be a flood of questions 37 milliseconds after Google ships it to production).

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