The iPad Pro has been my most frequent — mind you, not my favorite — computing machine of choice for the past three years. It’s a ridiculously fast, amazingly fluid tablet with a great keyboard and a fantastic screen to go with it. It also gives me fits from time to time.
Stage Manager, for all its good intentions, is still stuck in a rut. I often connect to an external monitor when I am tired of squinting atand hunching my back over its 13-inch panel, which can’t do proper multi-app windowing, nor is it large enough for running multiple apps side by side.
Yet, the seamless integration with the Apple ecosystem and just how close it now feels to macOS keeps me entangled in its cruel love. Apple will never allow the iPad to taste the freedom of desktop workflow, but we can hope. With Android, I have lost hope.
The iPad Pro is close to a good computing machine. Even the iPad mini is a nice companion computer. I can’t say the same for any Android slate. That’s a shame, especially for a platform that has left the door ajar for third-party development since its Big Bang moment.
What on Earth is happening here?
It’s wild to imagine that Android has offered a hidden desktop mode for years. In Android 10, it was merely a bare-bones launcher targeted at developers that still offered features like freeform windows.
Setting it up was a chore, but the foundation material was there. Android Q offered glimpses of a desktop mode back in 2019. Five OS generations later, a proper desktop mode still eludes Android.
So, why buy into promises like “powerhouse tablet computing”? Instead of spending a fortune on an Android tablet, just buy an affordable one, watch films, scribble, sketch, and call it a day. Right?
Heck, we have a $500 tablet with plenty of juice, and it gave us a whole gaming console. Yet, a $1,000 slate from a top brand can’t shine in desktop computing.
It’s perplexing because, in the long spell of Android desktop teasers, Samsung has offered — and refined — its own Android-based desktop environment called DeX. To date, it is the sole desktop flavor of Android with a functional interface and practical tools.
Yet, it is far from perfect. There are still some inconsistencies with navigation control, full-screen continues to fumble with (and within) certain apps, some mobile apps scale horribly on the large canvas, and a few are utterly useless.
Lack of extension support is a productivity red flag, and there are scenarios where anything less than a proper desktop environment won’t cut it. But it also does a few things really well.
App resizing is free (technically), window tiling and pinning are convenient, universal search is neat, and so are taskbar customization and app sorting. There are plenty of resolution choices, and the Good Lock app throws a few tricks of its own into the mix for extra versatility.
Then there are brands like OnePlus that are experimenting with their own flavor of a tablet-first desktop experience. The Open Canvas multitasking system, in particular, is lovely. On the fringes, there’s Motorola, which offers its own “Smart Connect” desktop iteration with smartphones. This is where things get problematic.
Every Android label wants to offer its own take on desktop computing, both on-device and/or tethered to a larger screen. Diversity is desirable, but when it comes to the fundamentals of computing, there are a few constants.
Basic keyboard shortcuts and input uniformity are two such constants. Imagine running into a different drawer, windowing, and keyboard shortcuts as you switch from a Dell laptop to an Asus laptop, even though both run the same Windows OS.
Thankfully, that’s not the case, but unfortunately, Android is stuck in that exact conundrum.
We don’t have a platform-wide concept of a desktop mode. And that means whatever few options we have, they are either half-baked or offer their ownunique learning quirk, down to the button shortcuts on their keyboards.
This is where iPadOS scores a massive victory. You can seamlessly switch between a Mac and iPad keyboard, yet feel at home with the layout and native shortcuts. It, therefore, doesn’t feel as frustrating to plug an iPad Pro into a monitor for some work in the way it does when using any Android tablet out there.
Then there’s the cursor and trackpad click inconsistency. I often find myself glancing at the shortcuts and gestures before I fully get used to DeX or using the OnePlus Pad 2 with the supplied keyboard.
On top of that, the click response and fluidity on Android desktop environments are nowhere near as fluid and reliable as on iPadOS. All Google had to do was spill over the Chrome OS formula onto Android, set some rules for peripheral input, and standardize shortcuts.
But alas, that never materialized.
The status is so excruciatingly sloth-paced that it took until the release of the Android 15 QPR1 Beta 2 to finally get a taste of Android’s desktop windowing facility on tablets. That is, if you own a Google Pixel Tablet. Otherwise, your only other option is diving into the Pixel Tablet emulator in Android Studio Preview.
Even with a Pixel tablet and the latest QPR build, you must enable the Developer mode and flick the Enable freeform windows toggle. It’s mind-bendingly frustrating that it took Google so long to even dish out this feature, despite the OS experimenting with tablets for around 15 years.
With such a sluggish pace, I am not even sure if we should ask — or expect — Google to serve up a desktop computing experience for Android that is on par with iPadOS or that even touches the versatility of Chrome OS.
Slivers of hope
As mentioned above, desktop windowing is getting a start at a native level with the QPR build of Android 15. There is a fixed taskbar at the bottom, with the ability to pin apps for fast access. Users can run multiple apps simultaneously across resizable windows, each with its own header bar and window controls.
“Once you are in the desktop space, all future apps will be launched as desktop windows as well,” promises Google. The window controls will also support keyboard shortcuts.
Developers, on the other hand, must ensure their apps at least aim for Tier 2 of Google’s Large screen app quality guidelines to enable freeform UI resizing for window management in desktop mode.
Another great piece of news is that when two apps are running side by side, they will support drag and drop. There’s also a keyboard shortcuts API available, one that allows developers to showcase all the shortcuts they’ve built via a standardized surface.
Furthermore, users will be able to run multiple instances of the same app. For example, you can manage Chrome tabs across different windows, and a similar approach will be applied to productivity apps like document editors.
“By optimizing your apps for desktop windowing on Pixel Tablet, you are not only enhancing the app experience on that specific device, but also future-proofing your apps for the broader Android ecosystem where freeform windowing will become prevalent,” says a Google Developer update.
Once again, Google is making a bold promise to developers, even though I don’t have a lot of faith due yo the brand’s past commitment to the cause of tablets. But it seems redemption will arrive in a most unlikely fashion.
Google could soon merge Chrome OS into Android to create a unified desktop OS that would rival what Apple has done with iPadOS. However, the report adds that it’s “a multi-year project,” which means it will take a few years before Android enthusiasts can realize their computing dreams on a tablet.
There is speculation floating around a new Pixel laptop that will likely run a fresh take on Android with a desktop twist instead of Chrome OS as we know it. Google is also said to be working on a version of Chrome that will finally add extension support, which would be a monumental move.
All signs point to Google finally refining the inherent OS frameworks and the accompanying hardware input pipeline to deliver a meaningful desktop experience on Android tablets. We just don’t know how long it’s going to take.
It’s about time, Google!