{"id":224494,"date":"2026-03-17T05:36:00","date_gmt":"2026-03-17T09:36:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/03\/17\/android-is-going-desktop-and-heres-an-early-peek-at-onboarding\/"},"modified":"2026-03-17T05:55:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-17T09:55:08","slug":"android-is-going-desktop-and-heres-an-early-peek-at-onboarding","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/03\/17\/android-is-going-desktop-and-heres-an-early-peek-at-onboarding\/","title":{"rendered":"Android is going desktop, and here&#8217;s an early peek at onboarding"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.androidauthority.com\/android-desktop-onboarding-3649453\/\">Android is going desktop, and here&#8217;s an early peek at onboarding<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.androidauthority.com\/android-desktop-onboarding-3649453\/\">https:\/\/www.androidauthority.com\/android-desktop-onboarding-3649453\/<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Publish Date: <a href=\"publish_date]\">2026-03-17 05:36:00<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Source Domain: <a href=\"www.androidauthority.com\">www.androidauthority.com<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Mishaal Rahman \/ Android Authority<\/p>\n<p>TL;DR<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Google\u2019s been making preparations to position Android more and more to take advantage of a desktop PC interface.<\/li>\n<li>New onboarding screens in Android Switch reveal some of the early messages desktop users could expect.<\/li>\n<li>References to hardware keyboard keys help establish that these screens aren\u2019t meant for phones.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The Android landscape is about to change in a big way, and while smartphones aren\u2019t going away anytime soon, Google\u2019s platform is currently preparing a major expansion into desktop computing. In addition to the Android Desktop Mode we can already try out, projects like Aluminium OS tease an Android-based native desktop experience. And as wait to see exactly how these desktop ambitions will all take shape, we\u2019ve got an early look at one corner to share with you.<\/p>\n<p>It may be a little while since you\u2019ve seen one, but we\u2019re all familiar with the Android onboarding screens we run into when setting up a new device. You know the routine: set up your Wi-Fi, configure your Google account, and get harassed about not having your SIM inserted yet. Right now, that also includes some messaging delivered through the Android Switch app, introducing users to a few of Google\u2019s latest AI-powered features. And based on what we\u2019re finding, it looks like Google could bring a similar screen to desktops.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Don\u2019t want to miss the best from Android Authority?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><img class=\"e_lg\" decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" sizes=\"9.375rem\" title=\"google preferred source badge light@2x\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.androidauthority.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/google_preferred_source_badge_light@2x.png 676w, https:\/\/www.androidauthority.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/google_preferred_source_badge_light@2x-64w-20h.png 64w\" alt=\"google preferred source badge light@2x\" src=\"https:\/\/www.androidauthority.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/google_preferred_source_badge_light@2x.png\"\/><img class=\"e_lg\" decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" sizes=\"9.375rem\" title=\"google preferred source badge dark@2x\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.androidauthority.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/google_preferred_source_badge_dark@2x.png 676w, https:\/\/www.androidauthority.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/google_preferred_source_badge_dark@2x-64w-20h.png 64w\" alt=\"google preferred source badge dark@2x\" src=\"https:\/\/www.androidauthority.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/google_preferred_source_badge_dark@2x.png\"\/><\/p>\n<p>Just to contextualize what you\u2019re seeing here: We\u2019re running Android Switch version 1.0.882455745 on an Android phone, but we\u2019ve tricked the app into thinking that it\u2019s running on an Android desktop PC. Under these circumstances, the app presents a very different, still very much in-development onboarding screen:<\/p>\n<p><img class=\"e_lg\" decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" sizes=\"(min-width: 64rem) 51.25rem, 80vw\" title=\"android share desktop onboarding 1\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.androidauthority.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/android-share-desktop-onboarding-1.jpg 1080w, https:\/\/www.androidauthority.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/android-share-desktop-onboarding-1-29w-64h.jpg 29w, https:\/\/www.androidauthority.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/android-share-desktop-onboarding-1-1000w-2244h.jpg 1000w, https:\/\/www.androidauthority.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/android-share-desktop-onboarding-1-642w-1440h.jpg 642w, https:\/\/www.androidauthority.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/android-share-desktop-onboarding-1-481w-1080h.jpg 481w, https:\/\/www.androidauthority.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/android-share-desktop-onboarding-1-385w-864h.jpg 385w, https:\/\/www.androidauthority.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/android-share-desktop-onboarding-1-169w-380h.jpg 169w, https:\/\/www.androidauthority.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/android-share-desktop-onboarding-1-535w-1200h.jpg 535w\" alt=\"android share desktop onboarding 1\" src=\"https:\/\/www.androidauthority.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/android-share-desktop-onboarding-1.jpg\"\/><\/p>\n<p>AssembleDebug \/ Android Authority<\/p>\n<p>As you can see, the messaging there is incomplete, and appears to be referencing some icon art that isn\u2019t yet available for the app.<\/p>\n<p>Even in this state, though, there\u2019s clear evidence in support of this being an&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.androidauthority.com\/android-desktop-onboarding-3649453\/\">Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Android is going desktop, and here&#8217;s an early peek at onboarding https:\/\/www.androidauthority.com\/android-desktop-onboarding-3649453\/ Publish Date: 2026-03-17&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":224495,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/www.androidauthority.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/Android_desktop_mode_hero_image-scaled.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[46],"tags":[70],"class_list":["post-224494","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-android","tag-google"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224494"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=224494"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224494\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":224496,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224494\/revisions\/224496"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/224495"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=224494"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=224494"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=224494"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}