Android’s new desktop windowing mode has changed how I use my tablet

Google has been working on bringing desktop-like freeform windows to Android since the days of Android Nougat. The feature dwindled for a while and was recently revived, likely because of Google’s aim to evolve Android into a desktop OS, too. As part of that transformation, there’s a new Desktop Mode that shows up when you plug your Android phone into a large display, Samsung DeX-style, as well as an effort to bring a similar interface directly to your device, as long as you have a large display in your hands.

This is what Google is now calling “desktop windowing,” and after many months in testing under Developer Options, the feature is now available by default on tablets running the stable Android 16 QPR3. For now, that only means the Pixel Tablet, but any other tablet that runs or gets updated to Android 16 QPR3 — more likely, Android 17 — in the future should have this capability out of the box. I’ve been testing it to see how it works, and honestly, I’m impressed. It’s made me think of using my Pixel Tablet in a different light.

If you’re curious about what desktop windowing feels like on the Pixel Tablet, please watch the demo video above to see how everything works and all the possible gestures and options Google has added. You can snap apps to each side of the screen, resize them, maximize or minimize them, add new apps to your desktop, adjust their size, get existing apps out of or into a desktop, and create multiple desktops and switch between them. It’s all pretty extensive for a feature that just rolled out.

The first thing I noticed, though, before all of this, is how smooth animations and transitions are. Resizing apps is seamless, though doing it with a finger on a touchscreen is a bit clunkier than what I’m used to when I resize windows on my computer. Snapping apps down into a desktop or back into full screen is smooth, and so is snapping them to the screen’s sides. I love that the bottom taskbar shows all of the currently open apps from ongoing desktops and lets me switch between them with a tap, regardless of which desktop they’re in or whether they’re in the foreground or background. Android switches to the desktop that has the app and brings its window to the foreground.

The small window previews in the app switcher are excellent, too. No matter how wonky or misaligned my floating windows are, in different sizes or aspect ratios, the preview aligns them perfectly next to each other. And I specifically appreciate that if you snap app windows side-by-side, you can still drag the bar between them once to resize them both at the same time. I was afraid that using freeform floating windows like these would mean losing this handy ability to adjust two apps simultaneously, but Google had thought of it, too.

If gestures aren’t your thing, you can still do most of this with simple taps. Starting a new desktop is easy from the app switcher, and adding new apps is as simple as opening the app picker and choosing the app you want to see in a new window on your desktop. There are familiar minimize, maximize, and close buttons in the corner of every floating app window.

Additionally, the drop-down menu next to the app name in window mode, or in the app switcher, just like the floating top handle in full-screen apps, all open a menu with quick shortcuts to trigger the old split-screen mode, send the app to a desktop, or go full screen. It all feels pretty complete, but there are still some missing bits and pieces.

Besides all the current options, menus, and gestures, I love that Google has managed to find a good compromise between desktop windowing and the good ol’ way of using full-screen apps on an Android tablet. Both methods co-exist, so you can ignore desktops completely if you don’t like how they work, or switch everything to floating windows in desktops, or mix-and-match. This allows me to bundle multiple apps together if I know I want to use them simultaneously and quickly jump between them, while keeping other apps separate, in their own full-screen modes.

Desktop windowing’s big benefit over the old way of multitasking is that switching between apps is so incredibly fast. You don’t have to use the app switcher since all running app icons are kept in the bottom taskbar. There isn’t even any long lag or unnecessary animation, like when you swipe to the previous app. You just tap the app icon, and its window pops up.

But desktops are not all that useful when you want an app to be maximized (above) or you need two apps side by side (below). Desktops leave an empty bar at the top of the screen and dedicate another top bar to each app’s window, as well as pinning the bottom taskbar to the screen (look at the screenshots on the right). It’s a lot of wasted vertical space on a 10-inch tablet screen. Meanwhile, the usual full-screen app and split-screen mode (screenshots on the left) don’t waste this precious space and show more information and more data. It’s not a contest.

If you want to use one or two apps at a time, stick to Android’s regular app window management. If you want more apps and you don’t mind losing some screen estate for the benefit of super-fast app switching, then desktops are a good idea.

For me, there’s a limit, though. I’m not a huge fan of seeing multiple small windows on my screen; anything more than two or three apps side by side is unusable. I also find small floating windows pointless (right screenshot below). I might as well maximize the Play Store since it’s hiding everything beneath it and making it impossible to use those apps. That is to say, there’s a benefit to desktop windowing, but you can go far into the opposite direction and make your apps unusable.

After using desktop windowing on my Pixel Tablet for a week, I’m more excited about Android’s desktop progression, but I’m still worried this isn’t enough. For one, you can move an app between desktops, or at least I haven’t found how to do it yet (maybe it requires a keyboard shortcut?). If an app is already open in full-screen, you can’t choose which desktop it switches to; it’ll always go into the first desktop. You can’t rearrange desktops either. And for the life of me, I can’t figure out how to open two different Chrome windows in two separate desktops. It kind of works in Chrome Beta and Dev, but not fully, so maybe future Chrome versions will handle it better.

I’m sure there are more limitations I haven’t thought of yet, too. I’m still approaching this as a “tablet” interface, but it’s supposed to be a desktop-ready experience, too, and it’s still far from ready in that regard. As a bonus Samsung DeX-like mode embedded in our phones (when using an external display) and tablets (directly on the screen), though, it’s quite awesome. It really made me want to buy a Bluetooth keyboard and mouse to test it as a pseudo-laptop setup. I think it would work quite well.