GrapheneOS Desktop Mode

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41

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.

42

I didn’t have to touch USB settings to use Desktop mode, are you sure?

43

Some users (like myself) set the USB port to charging-only or disable it entirely since we don’t have a use case requiring it. I assume this is what they are referring to.

44

Mmm, I have it set to charging-only when locked, except bfu

45

same here, sorry I should have been more specific

46

Try enabling Desktop Site on your browser. Hopefully in the future this is automatic.

47

That’s less secure than the default, may I ask why?

48

I think it was the default setting when the feature was introduced and then later it was hardened, I’ll have to consider to change it.

My only concern is what if my screen get damaged and I can’t access the phone without and external mouse/keyboard/pc? :thinking:

I also use an audio dongle to connect my headphone but that is not a great deal.

49

/s pay for a screen replacement. /s.

Joking aside, IIRC if you enable desktop experience, currently you cannot unlock the device by “typing” your password / pin. Maybe it is different if you simply mirror the screen.

50

Just tested it on Graphene OS latest.

Here are things that are still annoying/buggy.
Summary is that so many small things just kill the workflow.

  • Still need to enable developer options and reboot after.
  • Web Apps still are nowhere to be seen
  • UI on IronFox (likely Firefox as well) is still horrendous. When you type a new URL, suggestions take the entire screen.
  • Brave is better, suggestions take perhaps 1/3-1/4 of screen, similar to desktop.
    -After exiting Desktop mode, I can’t type on Brave URL bar anymore. Keyboard doesn’t pop when I click on the URL bar. Edit: Solved by closing the app.

Wifi issues:

Context: I have a Pixel 9. Place with “1 bar” 5ghz wifi reception.

Android still does this weird behavior:

  • When looking for Wi-Fi,it will give full power to chip, and detect the wifi and connect. But then, it decides : no, less power is fine. And therefore the phone is disconnected from Wi-Fi. (Could be wrong on the reasons behind the issue, but the result is the same : My laptop with older hardware has more stable connection)
51

I use web apps in GOS desktop mode on Pixel 9. I’ve moved almost all my computing to desktop mode. The only stuff I do on a laptop still are stuff like streaming, gaming, and casual web browsing. It actually feels like a rally good segregation of my “riskier" tasks. I’m curious to see if they’ll fix the major bugs in the Android 17 release. If so, this is totally ready to recommend.

52

The one I have do not show up on the screen.

53

It treats them as an instance of Vanadium, so when you click to open it thinks it’s already open. This is definitely a glitch they need to fix. I pin them to my task bar, and then right click and select open new window (I forget the exact wording) and they open as they should.

54

GrapheneOS is not QPR3 yet, so i would not assume there is big improvement over the initial qpr2 release.

55

QPR1 and QPR3 are Pixel exclusive now, so we will have to wait for Android 17.

56

Are they ? QPR1 was open-sourced. Have I missed an announcement?

57

Yep, here.