Google Has Finally Flipped The Switch For Pixel 8 USB-C Display Output
Suppose you have a Google Pixel 8 and consider yourself a power user in Android-related things. In that case, you’ll likely be annoyed that you can’t easily cast your Pixel to a bigger screen through a wired connection. A special kind of dock was required for this until the Android 14 QPR3 Beta 2 came out a few days ago.
Now, thanks to a piece from Android Authority, we know that all you need to do is grab your USB-C cable, plug one end into your phone and the other end (USB-C or HDMI) into your computer monitor or your TV, hit “Mirror display” and you’ll cast your Pixel screen to a bigger display.
This is being enabled through a software update on the Pixel 8 series because they always had the hardware capacity to do this (DisplayPort Alternate Mode). Still, it was turned off in the software, and nothing but digging around in a rooted Pixel could help enable it. Thankfully, the production version of QPR3 should enable this for Pixel users.
Will The Pixel 8 Have A DeX-Like Desktop Experience?
Plugging your Google Pixel 8 into a bigger display with this feature enabled will simply cast what’s on your Android screen to the bigger display. But that’s not how Samsung DeX works, as it gives you a unique user interface tailored for a desktop experience. The question is, can we expect the Pixels to have a similar desktop feature?
The thing is, it already does. Once again, though, it is not enabled by default, and the only way to turn it on is by activating it with some know-how. However, currently, the “force desktop mode” feature doesn’t provide much, and it still needs a lot of effort. Hopefully, we’ll see that with Android 15.
Will We See This Feature Come Down To Older Google Pixels?
If you hope to see this feature trickle down to older Pixel models, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but you won’t get that. The reason is that DisplayPort Alternate Mode needs to be supported on the hardware itself, and without that, the feature won’t work.
The Pixel 8 series is the only one with hardware support for this feature, so older Pixels will not be fortunate enough to support this, even with the QPR3 beta installed. We can keep our fingers crossed that it’ll be a staple on Pixel phones moving forward, though.
