Samsung’s DeX software lets you use supported phones like desktop computers when you connect an external display and optionally a keyboard and mouse. Last year the company made things even easier by nixing the need for standalone accessories — you can just plug a Samsung phone into your laptop or desktop computer with a USB cable to interact with your Android apps on a big screen.

Officially that only works if you’re using the Samsung DeX app for Windows or Mac. But Keith Myers figured out an unofficial method for using DeX with a Chromebook or Linux computer.

In order to get this up and running, you do need to jump through a few hoops though. You’ll need a bit of special hardware that you probably don’t have lying around, and you’ll need to install some software including the Android SDK and/or Android Studio and scrcpy, an open source screen mirroring tool.

Once everything’s ready to go and you’ve set up your computer and phone to support this unofficial DeX implementation, you should be able to interact with your Android phone through a desktop-like environment visible on your Chrome OS or Linux PC.

Myers says keyboard and mouse input is working, as is the shared clipboard and drag & drop installation of APK files that you’ve downloaded using your PC.

But there are a few things that don’t work. You won’t be able to hear sound through the PC speakers. It’ll come out of your phone instead… although you can always use headphones or a wireless speaker. And you won’t be able to right-click using your computer’s mouse or trackpad, but you can connect a mouse to the phone itself if you really need that feature.

You can find more details, and step-by-step instructions for enabling Dex on Linux or Chrome OS at Keith Myers’ website.

via xda-developers

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