Plug your Android phone into your Windows PC or Mac and a real desktop opens on your screen, with a taskbar, an app drawer, and windows you can drag, resize and snap side by side
Unplug it and your phone goes back to being a phone
Free. Open source. No account. No subscription. No root
Recording.2026-08-21.141924.mp4
Ubuntu snapped to the left, the desktop's own settings app snapped to the right, both running on the phone.
- Download the app for Windows or Mac and install it
- Turn on USB debugging on your phone. Go to Settings, then About phone, tap Build number seven times, go back, open Developer options and switch on USB debugging
- Plug the phone in and tap Allow when it asks
The desktop opens on its own and the app gets out of your way. There is nothing to install on the phone. Everything it needs comes inside the download.
Any Android phone running Android 8 or newer will work. You do not need a Samsung, a special cable, a monitor, or root.
This is not a copy of your phone screen stretched out. It is a desktop, running at your monitor's size, sitting next to your other windows.
- A taskbar along the bottom with your open apps, a clock and calendar, a battery indicator, and quick switches for Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, mobile data, airplane mode, torch and rotation, plus one that turns the phone's own screen off while the desktop keeps running
- Your phone's notifications, on the desktop. They pop up in the bottom corner as they arrive, the way your computer's own do, and stay in a bell at the far right of the taskbar with a count on it. Each one carries the same buttons the phone would give you — reply, mark as read, whatever the app offers. A call comes in and a banner drops down across the top with Answer and Decline, so you never have to go and find the handset
- Volume and what's playing in the quick settings panel. Sliders for media and ringer, and play, pause and skip for whatever the phone is playing
- Proper windows. Every app gets a title bar with close, minimise, maximise and snap left or right. Drag them where you want. Resize them from a corner. Put two apps side by side and get something done
- Windows stay where you put them. Move an app or resize it, and that is where it opens next time. Every app remembers its own spot
- An app drawer you can search, and a desktop you can drop shortcuts onto
- Your home screen widgets, the real ones, live and working, on the desktop. Your calendar, your music, your weather. Click inside one and the app opens in a window instead of taking over the screen
- Drag files from your computer onto the phone. App files install themselves
- Two looks. A DeX style desktop, or a Windows 11 style one with a Start button. Switch between them in one click
Open the app drawer and the four built in tools sit at the top, above everything else you have installed.
This is Ubuntu 24.04 with a full desktop, running on the phone itself, in a window on your screen. Not a terminal.
Before it starts downloading it asks what you want in it: Firefox, Chromium, VS Code, git, Node.js, GIMP and IntelliJ IDEA. The first four are ticked, so you can just press Install and get the lot — untick the ones you will not use and save the download, or tick the extras: Node.js (the current LTS, npm included), GIMP, or IntelliJ IDEA Community. There is a shared folder so files move between Android and Linux without any fuss. No root, and no long setup guide to follow.
You can also get just the Linux part on its own. On the releases page there is a separate download called LinuxOnDroid. It is about 1 MB, you install it on the phone by itself, and that is all you need. No computer, no cable, no desktop app. Tap the icon and Ubuntu opens on your phone. Keep about 3 GB free for it.
A control strip sits along the top wherever Linux is running, on the phone or in a window. It holds the pointer, the keyboard, the screen and zoom. Tap the pointer and you pick how touch should behave: point where you look, use the screen as a touchscreen, or use it as a trackpad. Each one spells out what taps, drags and two finger gestures do.
Open the Web viewer, press Start, and the phone shows you a web address.
Type that address into a browser on your laptop, a work computer, or anyone else's machine, enter the six digit code the phone shows you, and the whole desktop appears in the browser tab. Click things. Type. Browse the phone's files and download them. Drag files onto the page to send them over.
Nothing gets installed on the other machine. No extension, no app, no account, no sign up. Just a browser.
On your home Wi-Fi it works with no setup at all. If you want to reach your phone from anywhere in the world, including over mobile data, it can do that too without you opening a single port on your router.
A working Docker engine, on a normal phone, with no root.
docker pull, docker run and docker compose all work. You get your
containers and images listed in a window, plus a terminal. It is not fast,
because it is a phone, but it is the real thing.
There is a proper Settings app inside the desktop. Ten sections, around forty things you can change, and every change shows up straight away. No Apply button and no restart.
- Themes. Dark, light, and a warm paper theme
- Wallpapers. Eleven of them, plus a dimmer slider
- Languages. Nine, including Hindi, Gujarati, Arabic, Chinese, Spanish, French, German and Portuguese, or just follow whatever your phone is set to
- Mouse pointers. Pick a shape, a colour, an outline and a size
- Trackpad gestures. Five three finger gestures, and you choose what each one does
- Picture quality. Resolution, frame rate, sharpness and sound, so you can trade smoothness for battery life on an older phone
- Text size, window behaviour and clipboard sharing, among others
Start over USB, switch to Wi-Fi, then pull the cable out. Your phone gets remembered, so next time it connects on its own. If the connection drops it comes back by itself.
You can also connect wirelessly from the start by scanning a QR code the app puts on your screen.
Everything it changes gets put back when you are done, automatically. That happens even if you yank the cable out mid session, because the phone tidies up after itself a short while later. Nothing keeps running and nothing stays switched on behind your back.
| Open Android DeX | Samsung DeX | Android 16 desktop mode | scrcpy | Vysor / AirDroid | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Works on any Android phone | ✅ Android 8+ | ❌ Samsung only | ❌ recent Pixels and tablets | ✅ | ✅ |
| Needs a monitor or special cable | ❌ uses your PC screen | ✅ required | ✅ required on phones | ❌ | ❌ |
| Needs root | ❌ never | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ |
| Resizable windows with title bars | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ❌ one mirror window | ❌ one mirror window |
| Live home screen widgets on the desktop | ✅ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ |
| Phone notifications, and answering calls | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ❌ | |
| Full Ubuntu desktop included | ✅ | ❌ dropped in 2019 | ❌ | ❌ | |
| Docker | ✅ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ |
| Free and open source | ✅ GPL 3.0 | ❌ | part of the OS | ✅ Apache 2.0 | ❌ |
| Account or subscription | ❌ none | ❌ none | ❌ none | ❌ none | ✅ required |
Put together from each project's public documentation in August 2026. If something here is wrong, tell us and we will fix it.
Samsung DeX only works on Samsung phones and needs a monitor. Google's desktop mode needs a recent phone and a monitor as well. scrcpy is excellent software, but it mirrors your phone rather than giving it a desktop. The commercial mirroring apps put your phone in a window and then charge you every month for the useful half of it. Open Android DeX runs on almost any phone, using the screen already in front of you, for nothing.
| Your computer | Windows 10 or 11, or a Mac (Intel or Apple Silicon) |
| Your phone | Any Android 8.0 or newer |
| A cable | Any USB cable that carries data, or skip it and use Wi-Fi |
| Root | No |
| An account | No |
| Money | No |
Which download?
| Your machine | File |
|---|---|
| Windows | ..._x64-setup.exe (installer) or ..._x64_portable.zip |
| Mac, Apple Silicon (M1 to M4) | ..._aarch64.dmg |
| Mac, Intel | ..._x64.dmg |
| The desktop, phone only (HDMI to a monitor, or Samsung DeX) | OpenAndroidDeX-Launcher-v<version>.apk |
| Just Ubuntu, phone only | LinuxOnDroid-v<version>.apk |
Do I need to root my phone?
No. Nothing here needs root and nothing needs Shizuku. All it uses is USB debugging, which is a normal Android setting.
Does this change my phone permanently?
No. It switches a few display settings on while the desktop is running and puts them all back afterwards, including when you unplug without closing the app.
Why does it want to read my notifications?
Because that is the only way Android lets an app show them. It is the same permission your smartwatch asks for. It powers three things: the cards that pop up in the corner, the bell in the taskbar, and the play and pause buttons in quick settings.
Nothing is sent anywhere. The notifications are read on the phone and drawn on the phone, and what you see on your monitor is the same video the rest of the desktop arrives in. When you press Answer, the desktop presses the button your dialler already put on the notification — the app itself holds no permission to make, answer or end a call.
Plug in with a cable and the desktop app turns this on for you and turns it back off when you finish. Without a cable, tap the bell in the taskbar and it will show you the phone screen that switches it on. Either way you can turn it off for good in Settings → Notifications, and the bell disappears with it.
Will it work on my phone?
Almost certainly, if it runs Android 8 or newer. It does not need Samsung hardware, DisplayPort, a dock or an adapter. A few phones with unusual software handle windows differently, so if yours misbehaves please open an issue.
My Mac says the app is damaged or will not open it.
That is macOS being careful about apps that have not paid Apple's notarisation fee. Open Terminal and paste this once:
xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine "/Applications/Open Android DeX.app"Then open it normally. macOS may also ask for Local Network permission, which is for Wi-Fi connections, and Accessibility, which is only used by the fullscreen button. USB needs neither.
Can I use the Ubuntu part without a computer?
Yes. That is what the separate LinuxOnDroid download on the releases page is for. About 1 MB, installed on the phone, and you tap the icon to get Ubuntu fullscreen. No cable and no desktop app.
If you install both, they keep their own separate copies of Ubuntu, because Android does not let one app read another's files. That means two downloads.
The Ubuntu install stops halfway on my Xiaomi, Samsung or Huawei.
Those phones are aggressive about killing apps that run for a long time with the screen off, and the first Ubuntu setup takes a while. Turn off battery optimisation for the app before you start the install. If you are using it through the desktop app this is handled for you.
Is my screen going through someone else's server?
No. Over USB or your own Wi-Fi nothing leaves your network. If you set up remote access from anywhere, you point it at a server you run yourself, and even then only a small amount of connection setup passes through it. Your screen and your access code never do.
Something went wrong. What do I send you?
Press the Diagnostics button in the app. It writes one file with everything needed to work out what happened, so attach that to an issue.
The plain log lives here if you want to read it yourself:
Windows %LOCALAPPDATA%\com.ccrstech.openandroiddex\logs\open-android-dex.log
macOS ~/Library/Logs/com.ccrstech.openandroiddex/open-android-dex.log
Building it yourself, and how the project is laid out
You will need: Node 20 or newer, Rust (stable), JDK 17 or newer, and the
Android SDK (platforms android-35 and android-36, build tools with d8),
with ANDROID_HOME and JAVA_HOME set. Windows also needs VS Build Tools with
the C++ workload. macOS needs the Xcode command line tools.
cd open-android-dex-tauri
npm install
npm run tauri devnpm run tauri dev is the way to run this. It rebuilds both phone side
payloads, deploys them, and applies permissions in the order that matters.
Hand launching scrcpy or sideloading the APK skips all of that.
npm run tauri build # Windows -> bundle/nsis/ ; macOS -> bundle/{macos,dmg}/
npm run apk # phone side payloads only
cargo test # from src-tauri/
# The two phone apps on their own, from openandroiddex-launcher/
./gradlew :app:assembleDebug # the launcher, sideloadable
./gradlew :linuxapp:assembleDebug # LinuxOnDroid
# The Play builds of the same two. Needs the release key — see
# openandroiddex-launcher/release-signing.gradle for the four variables, and
# .github/workflows/android.yml for the workflow that does this in CI.
./gradlew :app:bundleRelease :linuxapp:bundleRelease
# Frontend only work, no JDK or Android SDK needed:
SKIP_LAUNCHER_APK=1 SKIP_WMD_DEX=1 npm run tauri dev
# Raise the log level (default: debug)
OADX_LOG=trace npm run tauri devA fresh clone has an empty src-tauri/resources/bin/. Unpack the matching
scrcpy release into it, flattened, for a local bundle. Rebuilding the native
prebuilts is rarely needed and requires Docker:
bash openandroiddex-linux/proot/build.sh # libproot.so, libloader*.so
bash openandroiddex-docker/qemu/build.sh # libqemu.soReleasing. One dispatch versions everything, builds it and cuts the release:
gh workflow run desktop.yml -f bump=patch # or -f version=0.4.0, or -f dry_run=trueWhere things live
| Path | What it is |
|---|---|
| open-android-dex-tauri/ | The PC app. Tauri v2 (Rust) plus React 19, TypeScript, Vite and Tailwind v4 |
| openandroiddex-launcher/ | The desktop shell that runs on the phone. Everything you see |
| openandroiddex-wmd/ | The small window daemon that moves and resizes app windows |
| openandroiddex-linux/ | Ubuntu provisioning and runtime scripts |
| openandroiddex-docker/ | The Alpine VM scripts and QEMU build |
| openandroiddex-signal/ | Optional relay for reaching a phone from anywhere. One Node file with no dependencies |
| test/ | End to end checks that run without a phone |
| doc/ | Design records explaining why things are built the way they are. Read these before changing window management |
| .agents/AGENTS.md | Rules for AI coding agents and contributors |
Contributions are welcome. Please read the relevant record in doc/ first, because several decisions there look arbitrary until you see what was measured.
Copyright © 2026
Open Android DeX is free software under the GNU General Public License v3.0 or later. See LICENSE. It ships alongside independent third party software that keeps its own licences, including scrcpy, adb, QEMU, proot and FFmpeg. See COPYRIGHT and THIRD_PARTY_LICENSES.md.
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