GrapheneOS Desktop Mode

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Did a quick test after updating to GOS 2025112100, here are my first impressions:
The Goods:

  1. Second screen does appear to be more desktop-like, at least you have a proper task bar
  2. App drawers, navigation keys, opened apps, app window sizing, screen spliting improved a lot.
  3. Some apps works quite nicely on desktop mode. Like molly, newpipe, forkgram

The mah:

  1. Phone screen still has to be on in order to use second screen
  2. External keyboard and mouses can’t move freely between phone and second screen, many time I “acidentally” “moved” my keyboard to phone screen and never “move” it back to second screen, you have to unplug and replug to “move” them back.
  3. Keyboard shortcuts are unreilable: I am not sure if it is related to what apps in in foreground (some apps might restrict screenshots, yeah, but then why “windows key” stopped working as well?). In my quick test, alt-tab mostly works, windows key works 10% of the time, screenshot depends on your foreground apps, volume control works, “copy and paste” and “cut” mostly works. “Task-kill i.e. alt+F4” does not work, “Close tab i.e. CTRL+W” does not work.
    I might need to look for sources about what shortkeys works on android. (Update: under system->keyboard->physical keyboard, you can see available keyboard shortcuts.)
  4. Phone screen is stuck on vertical when second screen is active, even with auto-rotate enabled.
  5. All external keyboard keys only affects / works on the screen it is registered to, for instance, if your keyboard is interacting with second screen, when you press printscreen key, it will only capture second screen, no options.
  6. When interacting with apps on second screen, the 3 navigation buttons doesn’t seem to work, I don’t even know how to go back to previous page. I tried different ways, ended up just close the app and restart it.
  7. My second screen background is solidfilled with light grey, not sure how I could change that yet.
  8. I have no clue how I could trigger quick tiles from second screen.
  9. Some of my PWAs does not scale properly, like PG forum, everything just looks huge, font size is like 48, I have no idea how to adjust that.
  10. If your keyboard has volume control and you use it, the volume slider will only appear on phone screen.
  11. Sometimes keyboard imput just randomly jumps to other location, couldn’t figure out why.
  12. Minor UI defects like the numbers in bettery icon gets overlapped, the interacting with 3 navigation buttons (which does not work), they whole taskbar flashes, overall UI and app scaleing is werid and non-adjustable.
  13. Notifications seems not poping up on second screen.
  14. My primary input method does not blend well with physical keyboard, nor second scren. If you pick the default keyboard, it does not seems to pop up with you select text box on second screen though)
  15. Desktop mode is still hidden in developer menu, also you need to relax your USB protection in order to use it. (It makes sense though, but I would really love if ther is a way we could get around the USB protection settings.) For this single reason, I don’t think I would use it if I a) use public USB charging port a lot, or b) I have a higher threat model.

Overall, improvement is quite huge as it becomes much more usable than before, still it is very unreliable and raw, I would say it is still on POC stage.

TBH I am quite disappointed with AOSP’s progress on desktop mode. Anyone who wants to get rid of Smasung Dex and jump to AOSP desktop mode, sorry you need to wait “quite a bit” longer.

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