Google surprised us last year with Android 12L, a version halfway between Android 12 and Android 13 designed for large screens: folding screens, tablets, Chromebooks and the like. We were able to test it on a mobile and a tablet, but it was still pending to know how it behaves on a pc. At last we have been able to test it with the help of the Canary version of Android Studio.
Google has been toying with the idea of a desktop mode for Android for some time, although it was not until Android 12L when the bet was serious. We have been able to verify this with an interface that includes, in its own way, the equivalent to a start menu, taskbar (with clock)floating windows, and other changes that aren’t present if you’re using Android 12L on a non-PC device.
This is Android on a “PC”
Android Studio allows you to create virtual devices that emulate mobile phones, smartwatches, Android Auto and more, but it was not until the Android Studio Electric Eel version (for now in Canary version) that the application allows you to create an emulated device with PC features.
After doing so, it is possible to apply the Android 12L system image to it, the same one that we were able to test a few months ago, but which behaves quite differently when the device is identified as a PC. The biggest change is in the taskbar.
We’ve seen Android 12L bring back the legendary app drawer button in the past, but it’s not present when the device is a PC. Instead there is a kind of home buttonas in Windows, although the icon in question is a minimalist circle.
There are all the usual suspects: a kind of start menu, the taskbar, the notifications, the windows…
Pressing this button displays the app drawer, which occupies the entire screen and is not very well optimized for the big screen, at least for now. If the drawer is open and you press the button again, it closes, as it would in the Windows menu.
The equivalent of the Windows Start menu (or the Android app drawer)
There’s another change to that taskbar that’s missing when you’re using Android 12L on other devices: the clock and status icons on the taskbar itself, instead of above. At the moment there are four icons: settings, notifications, connection and battery, in addition to the clock with the time.
This section does not seem to be very polished yet, since all the buttons perform the same action: display a panel that unifies the notifications and a few quick settings. At the moment Google seems to be recycling the Android notification panel on this little screen without further ado, although it is expected that it will change and improve in the future.
Quick settings and notifications
Adapting Android to large computer screens is not an easy task and requires the help of developers. Some applications, such as the system settings themselves, adapt quite well by dividing the interface into two columnswhile others – including the launcher itself – make the interface elements huge.
Some apps are well suited to the big screen
As expected, in the desktop mode that is activated when using Android 12L on a PC, the applications they open in windowed mode by defaultincluding a small upper bar -similar to the one in Windows- where we have a button to go back, minimize or maximize and close.
You can move the windows wherever you want and in principle open as many as you want, although for the moment it doesn’t seem to be possible to resize them as you please and sometimes an app that asks for confirmation can cause the others to wait too (for example, while you confirm if you want to download a file in Google Chrome).
It should be noted that when an application is open, it is displayed highlighted with a line below its icon on the taskbar, making it easy for you to return to it just by clicking on it.
Of course, the view of recents is not missing, which would be the equivalent of Windows Alt-Tab. There are few surprises here as it is basically the same as what we have already seen on mobile, with previews of different sizes.
Taking all this into account, Android 12L on a computer is far from perfect and still has a lot to polishbut it has come a long way since that first approach to desktop mode that we met in 2019. We said then that it was very green, and now it seems that the harvest is not so far away.
