The Google Pixel 9 supports display output out of the box, but it isn’t very useful

Check your mailboxes: The Google Pixel 9 has been delivered to many consumers. After setting up your new phone, you may be wondering what are some things you can do with it. If you were hoping to turn your Pixel 9 into a portable PC, I’m afraid you’ll be disappointed by what you’ll see when you actually hook it up to an external monitor. The reason I say that is because while all four phones in the Google Pixel 9 series support display output, they don’t do anything useful with it, at least not yet.

For the longest time, Google’s Pixel phones haven’t supported display output at all, making the Pixel 9 series an outlier in regard to external display support. In fact, last generation’s Pixel 8, Pixel 8 Pro, and Pixel 8a were the first Pixel phones ever to support display output. However, these three phones didn’t support the feature out of the box; instead, they only gained support for it following the June 2024 Pixel Feature Drop update.

In contrast, the Pixel 9, Pixel 9 Pro, Pixel 9 Pro XL, and Pixel 9 Pro Fold all support display output out of the box, so you don’t have to install any OTA updates or tinker with any settings to enable it. Under the hood, all four phones support a feature called DisplayPort Alternate Mode, which lets them transmit a DisplayPort signal over their USB-C connector pins. If you connect your Pixel 9 to an external display using a USB-C to HDMI adapter or USB-C to USB-C cable that supports display output, you’ll see a dialog pop up on screen that says, “Mirror to external display?”

Tap “mirror display” and your Pixel 9 will mirror its screen to the external display. Everything you see on your phone is mirrored onto the external display, and I’m sure you can immediately see the problem with this. Your phone’s UI isn’t particularly optimized for large landscape screens, so everything except for watching videos will look incredibly janky. This is why things like Samsung DeX exist on Galaxy devices. Unfortunately, no Samsung DeX equivalent is available on the version of Android that ships on the Google Pixel 9, at least not yet.

As I’ve reported previously, Google is working on a revamped desktop mode for Android, though it’s not ready for either the launch of the Pixel 9 or the upcoming Android 15 release. The revamped desktop mode that Google is working on brings significant changes to Android’s windowing capabilities, bringing it more in line with other desktop operating systems. However, Android’s revamped desktop mode still has quite a bit of ways to go before it’s ready for public release.

There are ways to make desktop mode better

If you can’t wait for Android’s revamped desktop mode to roll out, you can tinker with some settings on your Pixel 9 to make display output more useful. Follow the steps in this tutorial to enable freeform windows and Android’s existing desktop mode experience, which is far more barebones than the revamped experience that Google is working on, but it’s better than nothing. Then, install the Taskbar app from Google Play and follow its instructions to set it as the default secondary display launcher. Doing so will give you a desktop-like taskbar when you hook your Pixel 9 up to an external display.

Got a Pixel 7, Pixel Tablet, Pixel Fold, or older Pixel device? I’m afraid you’re out of luck, as none of these devices have hardware-level support for display output. Your only option for those devices is to purchase a DisplayLink adapter which, coupled with a special app, streams a recording of your screen to an external display. While you can’t get a desktop mode experience out of a DisplayLink setup, you can at least mirror your screen with one, though note that a lot of media streaming apps won’t work because the setup uses screen recording.