The Pixel 9’s hidden desktop ...

Not everybody desires to lug round a laptop computer as their cell laptop. Laptops have by no means been as mild or compact in 2025, however they’re nonetheless not as transportable as a pill. Which might be fantastic if pill working methods weren’t such a mixed bag. That leaves an more and more unusual set of choices for anybody searching for one thing else. It is actually simply DeX, the characteristic Samsung provides on some Galaxy units, that allows you to run Android apps in a windowed, desktop-style setting.

That’s, except the place to look in your Pixel 9. The hidden desktop mode in Google’s smartphones is a developer instrument fairly than a totally thought-out characteristic, but it surely suggests a potential future the place your Android cellphone is a monitor, keyboard, and mouse away from being one thing like a light-weight ChromeOS machine. Having spent the previous few years realizing how a lot of my work can occur in an online browser, it is a future I actually need.

The Pixel’s desktop mode isn’t a alternative to your PC

Its principally unfinished, however you may nonetheless attempt it

It is essential to caveat that the “desktop mode” on the Pixel 9 is unfinished to the purpose that it does not actually really feel like a “mode” in any respect. However it does provide you with a noticeably totally different expertise than utilizing your smartphone usually. The overwhelming majority of Android telephones max out at working two apps side-by-side (or one on high of the opposite). Having a complete monitor’s price of house to run windowed Android apps does allow you to do extra directly. It may also make you launch the bounds of the present design of some apps.

There are quirks to Google’s present implementation, too. For instance, you do not actually get any interface to regulate your expertise past entry to the app drawer for launching apps. It is also very laborious to seek out your mouse if it is one way or the other in your cellphone display screen fairly than the monitor you related to. (Bizarrely, the best means I discovered to repair that downside was opening an app on my cellphone that does not settle for mouse enter.) The bigger challenge, although, is that the Pixel 9’s desktop mode is simply not as fully-featured as DeX and even ChromeOS, which largely places you in an online browser however can run Android apps.

What the characteristic does, even in its half-baked state, is provide you with a glimpse of what is potential — a world the place your cellphone can also be your desktop laptop once you want it to be. That continues to be thrilling, particularly given the course Google could possibly be taking ChromeOS. If you happen to’re curious to attempt the characteristic out for your self, here is how you can allow it in your cellphone:

1. Open the Settings app.
2. Faucet on “About cellphone,” after which repeatedly faucet on the part labeled “Construct quantity” till you see a notification that you are a developer.
3. Return, and faucet on System.
4. Faucet on “Developer choices.”
5. Make sure that “Developer choices” is turned on on the high of the menu.
6. Then toggle the next choices on: Allow Freeform Home windows, Pressure actions to be resizable, Allow freeform home windows on secondary show, and Allow non-resizable in multi window.
7. Restart your cellphone in case your cellphone prompts you to.
8. Join your cellphone to your monitor to verify it really works.

Chrome OS may be rebuilt in Android

From a browser to one thing much more versatile

That this desktop characteristic exists in any respect is intriguing as a result of Google looks like it’d attempt merging Android and ChromeOS. Android Authority reported in November 2024 that Google was migrating ChromeOS totally over to Android to make software program that is a greater match for in-between units like tablets. Including some credence to the thought, Google announced in June 2024 that it was incorporating a few of the Android tech stack into ChromeOS.

The considering on the time was that it might permit ChromeOS to shortly undertake new Gemini options, a lot of which had been launched on Android first. However when you think about that the corporate additionally reorganized its teams internally, uniting issues like Pixel {hardware} and client software program like ChromeOS and Android into the identical crew, it appears much more probably it might all merge collectively. ChromeOS being rebuilt on Android does not imply that Pixels will get their very own model of DeX, but it surely might make that simpler to do. On the very least, it might imply that Google is all for bringing ChromeOS to totally different sorts of units after largely counting on its companions to innovate new kind components.

A laptop computer is not the reply to every little thing

However a smartphone has the potential to get shut

I’ve at all times been drawn to issues like tablet-only setups or Samsung DeX as a result of nothing in regards to the present means we use computer systems has felt last. Admitting that I can do a big portion of my work with an online browser and cell apps actually opened me as much as the thought of working in a distinct. Essentially the most attention-grabbing factor in regards to the Pixel 9’s buried desktop mode is that it makes it seem to be it could possibly be potential with a tool I already personal.

Google will share extra of what it has in thoughts for ChromeOS and Android at Google I/O in 2025, however within the meantime, when you’re all for exploring what living with Samsung DeX is like, Pocket-lint has dug in to it. And if one thing extra conventional is your pace, you may flip any outdated laptop computer you’ve mendacity round into a new Chromebook with out quite a lot of work.