Mishaal Rahman / Android Authority
Tl;
- Google is working on new features to manage external screens.
- These include the ability to reorganize screens, seamlessly move the mouse between screens, and an exchange to switch between mirroring and expand the screen.
- These new external display management features can arrive in Android 16, but are more likely intended for a future release.
Google wants to make Android a proper stationary operating system, and to do so, it needs to make it work better with traditional PC input methods and display options. Last year, Google added a new external viewing settings to Android, allowing users to adjust the screen resolution and rotation of external screens. This was a positive step, although it wasn’t enough for Android to compete with such as Windows, MacOS or even Google’s own Chrome OS. Google is now testing new external display management tools in Android 16 that brings Android closer to other stationary operations.
When you connect recently Google Pixel phones For an external screen you have the option to mirror the screen. However, if you adjust someone Development optionsInstead, you can expand the screen so that the external screen shows a basic desk -like interface instead of mirroring the phone’s screen.
However, expanding the screen from an Android phone to an external screen does not work the same as on PC operating systems. For one, the mouse is attached to a screen and cannot be moved between screens. Another problem is that Android does not allow you to switch between mirroring the screen and expanding it, forcing you to refine the developer options and then connect to the phone to change screen mode.
To solve the first edition, Google Mouse Marker Transports enables connected screens and adds the ability to reorganize them. The solution to the second edition is to add an exchange that alternates between mirroring the built -in screen and expanding it. None of these features are enabled in the past Android 16 Beta 2.1 Drop, but I managed to manually enable them with some effort.
In the video built in below you can see these new features in action. I start by connecting Pixel 8 Pro to an external screen – Nexdock XL—And open Android’s external screen settings On my phone. Originally, Android believes that my pixel is located under Nexdock, even though it is physically to the right of it, so to move the mouse marker between them, I have to swipe up and down on the touch. However, after moving the window that represents the Pixel screen to the right of the window representing Nexdock’s screen, I am able to move the mouse marker between screens by swipe left and right on the touchpad.
Just like on PCs, Android lets you accurately arrange the windows to match the actual limits of each screen. Similarly, you can switch between mirroring and expand the screen by switching “mirror built -in screen. “In addition, you can also adjust the size of text and icons on the external screen, separately from it on the built -in display. The ability to control the update speed of the external screen is currently missing, but there are indications that Google is working on it.
While we discovered these features in Android 16 Beta 2.1, we do not know if they will roll out in the coming stable release of Android 16. I assume that these features will not be present in the first release of Android 16, but will come to its first quarterly release, like it Lock screen widget support for phones.
These additions may seem basic, but they are crucial to making Android a proper stationary operating system. Google wants to push Android as the uniform desktop OS, which means Transition Chrome OS to an Android -BaseSo the company must add features that consumers have expected from desktop platforms. It will take some time for Android to reach functional parity with Chrome OS, but we are happy to see the end result.