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They ought to put the status bar at the bottom. All the designers using Macs probably forgot, but Chrome's tab interface was designed for Windows where it could be all the way at the top of the screen. And in general it's more common for desktop apps designed for mouse and keyboard to have frequently accessed UI elements at the top of the window than the bottom. So desktop apps would benefit from being able to use that real estate at the very top of the screen.

This is what you lose when you take a team developing a desktop OS and move it under a team doing a mobile OS.

This looks like it will help a lot of students and families who are on a budget. If you can just plug your phone into a screen you do not need to buy a separate laptop anymore. The browser extensions are the most important part because that is what makes a computer useful. I am glad to see they are thinking about this.

It really does look to be a rewrite of ChromeOS to make it a native Android experience with very few tweaks to the User experience that I can see.

I think it's a good idea on Google's part. The trend of consumers using mobiles as their one and only computing experience is still strong. This will blend the experience consumers have between desktops and their primary computing platform.

Essentially a clone of Windows 11, and those screenshots make me realise just how much I hate the rounded corners, borderless vagueness, and excess padding of "modern" UI.

For contrast, this UI is more my style: https://serenityos.org/screenshot-b36968c.png

I have absolutely no interest in expanding the use of Android in my life. I am, in fact, far more interested in going the other way and trying to reduce my reliance on any locked down platforms.

Tried the desktop mode on my Pixel 8 running GrapheneOS. It's getting very close to being usable.

https://imgur.com/a/Wfv6Hmt

Google’s entire business is predicated on collecting as much data on users as possible. This OS will be the worst spyware imaginable.

Some "first look"

It's just a slightly different showcase of the same UI shown in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yzDO-GS-Bm8

That UI is available to test on any Pixel 10 (maybe even any Android 16 device?)

Samsung should not give up DEX, is mature and works exceptionally well with applications that are supported (wireless DEX with my samsung tv works great). Knowing Google, they will give up after 5 iterations or updates will be very slow. It is good for the ecosystem, I hope it will become more mainstream.

Chrome and Android look like yin and yang: one never knows which one is planned to run inside the other.

I don't want a "PC future" where you can't just install software without OS vendor blessing.

Does it still require wiping your drive and enabling developer mode to install software outside the Play Store like ChromeOS does? DOA if so.

Many years ago I used to play around with CyanogenMod and Linux.

Life with work and a family became too busy to fuss with that stuff, but I'm rapidly approaching the point where abuse from android and Microsoft make using a less polished OS worth the bother.

Cookie banner doesn't have reject-all button

Isn't that against the rules nowadays?

Is it going to be the same future as Fuchsia OS? There were some good ideas in that one, but then one day it sort of disappeared. Not that that was surprising - Google is good at that.

It is interesting to consider the different developments happening with the big mobile orgs regarding the convergence computing paradigm:

- Samsung’s Dex has been out for a while - independent devs have been working on Linux “as an app” for some time - Android desktop interface in this article - Apple developing video output on iPhones - Apple working on a Macbook with a mobile chip

- another exciting thing is XR devices and mobile computing

- my concern is convergence computing will reduce the importance of desktop interfaces and the freedom we have to install whatever applications we want

The Chrome Extensions support is the interesting part here. That's often the dealbreaker for using mobile devices as computer replacements.

Google's had this weird situation where Android and ChromeOS overlap more every year. At some point maintaining two operating systems with converging feature sets seems wasteful.

My guess: ChromeOS probably survives for the education market where manageability matters more than capabilities. But for consumers? Android on a big screen with keyboard and mouse might just be good enough.

Is there really a reason to get excited about this? When we look at the path they took with Android on the phones, why should we believe that they will be any different from Microsoft on the desktop?

Windows keeps getting worse, but it's still not as bad as Android. It's like how an iPad with macOS would be great, but a MacBook with iOS would be terrible.

I've been using Fedora part-time and I'm quite happy with it. Although I access the Android ecosystem via Waydroid—which, I know, isn't a true 'Android desktop'—the reality is that few Android apps are actually designed for a desktop experience.

Android makes me feel like it wants to convince me that rooting is considered too dangerous even for advanced users—you have to be a developer to handle it, or you will kill yourself.

But it might be good news for the ARM platform. Given how fragmented ARM is, Windows on ARM has turned out to be an even bigger disaster, making a Linux-based approach a much more promising alternative.

Oh, I see Google's angle now. They want to make android a viable desktop OS in order to have more users using android Chrome rather than Windows Chrome, because the former lacks extension support, and thus ad blockers. Of course, you can still install brave or kiwi browser or Firefox to your heart's content, but most people won't. It's brilliantly simple. It's not too bad for power users, they'll probably use a different browser, or for developers, given the work they're putting into the Linux containers, but for most users...we'll see the expected result.

So would it make sense to sell a folding plastic shell with screen, keyboard and trackpad in it that you can bring in your bag and pull out to plug your phone into it?

I don't want a Chromebook with extra steps I want a real computer.

Well, that would be nice, honestly - to have Android as another option for desktop OS.

I remember there were some experiments to create a hardware laptop shell to insert smartphone into.

If it comes with fully functional command line, unix utils and ability to install linux apps from different stores, that would be great OS.

I wonder what does this mean for the attestation layer? If you can run banking apps on a desktop, this would be a massive game changer for many of us who only use normie OSes because of the need to use services that are mobile app only (or with functionally limited web apps). Means we would only need to keep a single phone rather than two

ChromeOS is 14 years old, not really sure why they’re just now going this route.

Android laptops are nothing new, unless you don’t count the crappy low end ones that have no business running it.

I’m sure Google will make their flagship apps nicely tailored but regular phone centric apps has to be an awkward experience.

Exciting .. I'm typing on that HP Dragonfly now :) Google - put me in the testing group pls - Paul H

Is this going to mean ChromeOS is going to eventually die or be merged with Android? Curious.

What ever happened to fuscia? Wasn’t that supposed to be their long term OS for desktop?

So I'm guessing ... no full adblockers allowed?

Is that tiling window management by default? Huh, finally the right choice to maximize small display area for laptop!

The good part about this is they've invested in bringing extensions support to Chrome.. of course only those "desktop" builds, but the code is there and for now you can use this on normal Android - if you compile it for yourself or download the Chromium APK.

I wonder whether they'll keep pretending that extensions are not supported on Android, perhaps even intentionally breaking support on mobile.. or maybe they'll stop this madness and just support extensions officially..

Is this meant to replace ChromeOS or will it actually be open-source for real?

It has windows, icons, taskbar and chrome. Seems like desktop to me!

I wonder what gogole's strategy with fuchsia is going to be.

What is it with everybody and the goddamn rounded corners?

Why on Earth would anyone wilingly use an OS where Google thinks they have the right to block or make it really hard to install non App Store apps? even if initially they allow you, they've shown their plan.

It looks really good.

I already have Samsung Dex. Is that the same as this?

I don't want any kind of store on my PC.

i prefer google to spy on my entire computer instead of microsoft.

Lot of wasted space. The status bar and dock/switcher could easily be on one line.

with win11, it's an opportunity to take the desktop market

My Huawei P20 Pro did this in 2018. It was fabulous, turned the OS into a mini-computer with a taskbar, desktop, icons, browser etc. It was still the best phone Ive ever owned (and I used to work at Google). It was no wonder Google killed with GSM. It was light years ahead even back then and they really hate competition.

Put it straight into Killed by Google.

Oh, so it's just yet another MacOS clone.

Can somebody, anybody have one single unique idea?

It looks like Win 11 with notification bar at top. Good job Google. Trully a revolutionary design, just like Android 4. /s

so... gnome?

God this looks like a nightmare. Using Android on a desktop would be a fascist dystopia. Using it on phones is bad enough, computing while wearing a straight-jacket, but now they're going to have complete control of our computers and spy on everything we do on it? I can't imagine a worse outcome for the PC.

I don't even want Android on my phone. I cannot imagine a universe where I want it on my computer.

I enjoy cool features like this, but as usual, I'm wary of the consequences.

Android is becoming more and more locked down like iOS. Even if it weren't, it's still always been more locked down than a standard desktop or laptop machine running an operating system of the user's choice.

With the advent of smartphones and tablets, already I see non- and semi-technical users often dropping their laptop or desktop and just using their phone or tablet. (I know people who don't even have a laptop/desktop anymore.)

Android having a full desktop interface will just add fuel to this fire, and further normalize running a locked-down OS and device that users don't truly own or control as their only computing platform.

The visual design is just so bad. Its so ugly and souless. I actually feel bad for the UI designer that had to put their name behind that.

Maybe they will sort out how terrible it is to try and use a keyboard or keyboard like (i.e. remote control on android TV) on Android apps, I hold out little hope.

It's like nobody tests focus + navigation at all.

If this allows one to still have (linux terminals?), then its (fine?) but Klaster_1 suggests that installing software would become hard without OS vendor blessing.

I mean, is this OS literally just android with a more desktop like UI?

Didn't Samsung have something like this called (just searched) Samsung Dex?

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Samsung+DeX&t=ffab&ia=images&iax=i...

What I would prefer is a linux device phone being more widespread than Android PC. Linux in PC is mostly pretty good.

We probably need some good linux phones. One of the biggest issues I find is that they are really price-y so even though I don't want much specs, I find it troubling to justify a 2x price increase in such sense.

> Didn't Samsung have something like this called (just searched) Samsung Dex?

The Android system is such a pain to work with. I’m curious to see whether they actually fixed the fundamentals making it unappealing for general purpose computing or they just stuck Android onto Chromebooks (guessing the latter).

No thanks.

No thanks to SpyOS.