Android N has another trick up its sleeve, the Split screen view, which allows you to run Android apps in actual window mode. Well split screen is great and all, but if you were looking for a true desktop OS like experience, there’s little you can do until someone figures out how to run android apps in window mode, you know, like Windows.
Nobody knew how to enable the hidden functionality at the time of N’s launch, until folks at Ars Techinca with some help from Zhuowei Zhang, managed to get the feature up and running on the Pixel C, Google’s most recent Android tablet offering.
It runs exactly how one would’ve expected it to- apps can be resized and dragged around a desktop in widows form. Although it works great on both tablets and phones, it seems better suited for devices with larger displays like a tablet. Tapping the recent apps button will now display an icon at the upper right corner of the app allowing you to pull the app into a free-form window view. A true desktop isn’t there yet, windows just float above a wallpapered background without any icons of any sort. While you try resizing the window size of apps, you’ll see them convert between tablet and phone layouts accordingly.
Is this a hint of things to come? Could there actually be a full fledged Android desktop OS launching soon as suggested by many in late 2015? It certainly seems that the new mouse support is some kinda indication (mouse icon changes to resize icon when moving to the edge of apps). Things are still very early. Ars also notes that there’s no actual start menu, no way to bring apps to the front when hidden behind other apps, no real background play (YouTube stops playing). The DPI seems to too off, with loads of white space and app bars taking up large amount of screen real estate.
For more pictures of Android N’s new functionality and instructions on how to enable using a few command line codes, check out Ars’s post linked below or watch their video here.
[Via- Ars Technica ]
