I recently moved, and the infra provider of the non-profit ISP I use imposes them a two month delay to set up a new fiber line.
During this delay, I met neighbors who accepted to share their WiFi with me. They live a bit far, across the way. The best way I found to get a stable connection with decent speeds was to hang my phone at the top of a window using a salad bag, and share the phone connection to a computer via USB.
I didn't find a way to automatically enable the USB connection sharing before plugging in the USB cable (didn't look for a solution neither, admittedly), so I had to plug the cable, enable the sharing and then put the phone in the bag and adjust the position, all that making sure the cable doesn't disconnect or everything needs to be redone from the start.
I discovered far too late that my distro now has a scrcpy package, which makes enabling the sharing conveniently from the computer.
Yes, I could have tried to ask immediate neighbors instead, probably. I should get my own line this morning, as it happens.
scrcpy is fantastic. I used to write longer texts with it, and now that I can use it again, I'll probably start doing it again.
In recent version of Android, it appears one needs to unlock blindly as the screen is black at this time, I suppose for security reasons.
scrcpy is amazing software something other people might not have realised you could possibly get Dex on some unsupported devices. I got it working on my Galaxy Z Flip 5 using
scrcpy --new-display=1920x1080/284
Amazing tool, but I had to stop using it. On my Samsung phone, I gesture based navigation. And every time I use scrcpy, the navigation stops working, and I have to restart the phone to get it working again. There's a ticket open but the developer has been unable to replicate the issue. Sadly until that is fixed, it is impossible to continue using it. The inconvenience (at least for me) is too real.
Did you manage to get it to work without a functioning screen on the phone?
I believe that unless your phone already has debugging enabled and the machine was already added a trusted machine for debugging, you're out of luck for controlling a phone with a dead screen?
Yeah my screen broken and I was in that situation and you're right; there's absolutely no way to access your phone. If you google it people will talk about workarounds like taking screenshots and accessing them over USB, but that no longer works because USB access requires confirmation on the screen.
Plugging in a display via USB also doesn't work because that also requires screen interaction to output to it (at least on Pixel phones).
The last thing I tried was plugging in a keyboard/mouse which do work automatically, but unfortunately I was using pattern unlock and there's no way to enter that via the keyboard (and good luck doing it with a mouse blind).
Finally the thing that you'd think should work - plugging in a new phone and transferring everything across ALSO requires you to confirm your pattern/PIN on the old phone.
It's absolutely insane. If anyone from Google is watching this.... people break screens!! Give them a way to access their stuff when the screen is broken.
The obvious easy solution is for the "transfer to a new phone" flow to allow entering the old phone's PIN/pattern ON THE NEW PHONE. Jesus.
I once dropped my phone like 40cm the 100th time and my screen went completely black. However, the touch still worked! After loads of time and comparing to another android phone, i managed to blindly navigate to that blind mode setting and enable it!
I have immense respect for those that are blind and need to interact this way. In the few days I used my phone this way I noticed multiple apps, especially my bank app with a keypad, had completely broken navigation and iirc not even numbered the actual buttons?! So it was a 'swipe right 9 times, double tap, swipe left 6 times' while the TTS was yelling nonsense!
This would have saved me a lot of mental anguish about 2 years ago, my phone screen died and I needed about 5 authenticators that were on it just to clock in at my (remote) job and get to what I needed to do the job.
Eventually I solved the issue by blind navigating to screen brightness and turning it all the way up, this made the screen act normal until I could replace it.
The lesson here is to not have a single point of such large failure, like I did.
Neat. I went the other way and started writing an RDP server for Android, just so that I can use _one_ client for everything. It’s been tough going, but it’s passably usable now.
Another gem to avoid using a tiny phone screen even more. Worked with my old LG V20 (Android 8.0). Perfectly smooth over USB 2.0. Reasonably smooth over Wi-Fi (adb tcpip 5555 while USB is connected, then scrcpy --tcpip=192.168.1.xxx_ wirelessly).
[TIL/xkcd#1053] scrcpy ("pronounced 'screen copy'") is "Display and control your Android device"
> mirrors Android devices (video and audio) connected via USB or TCP/IP and allows control using the computer's keyboard and mouse. It does not require root access or an app installed on the device. It works on Linux, Windows, and macOS
Coincidentally enough (or not) just yesterday while skimming through the Google laptop "Googlebook" announcement and thinking "Meh... none of that is new" and wondering if I could genuinely do all that with my current Linux/GrapheneOS setup I thought "Ok... maybe the Android windows is new" and I checked more scrcpy virtual display and display id which I use for mirroring Quest headsets. I thought "OK ok Google I give you that tiny feature" only to wake up this morning, nope, not even that.
Similarly, the other features for the Googlebook are just normal features from Google's Android builds. The announcement is really that there will be a Chromebook Plus class of devices running the new Android-based ChromeOS, so everything in Android now comes to these devices for free, and apparently, most of the features from the current CheomeOS will be ported too. I just hope this means that Linux app support in Android will match Crostini by the end of the year.
I recently moved, and the infra provider of the non-profit ISP I use imposes them a two month delay to set up a new fiber line.
During this delay, I met neighbors who accepted to share their WiFi with me. They live a bit far, across the way. The best way I found to get a stable connection with decent speeds was to hang my phone at the top of a window using a salad bag, and share the phone connection to a computer via USB.
I didn't find a way to automatically enable the USB connection sharing before plugging in the USB cable (didn't look for a solution neither, admittedly), so I had to plug the cable, enable the sharing and then put the phone in the bag and adjust the position, all that making sure the cable doesn't disconnect or everything needs to be redone from the start.
I discovered far too late that my distro now has a scrcpy package, which makes enabling the sharing conveniently from the computer.
Yes, I could have tried to ask immediate neighbors instead, probably. I should get my own line this morning, as it happens.
scrcpy is fantastic. I used to write longer texts with it, and now that I can use it again, I'll probably start doing it again.
In recent version of Android, it appears one needs to unlock blindly as the screen is black at this time, I suppose for security reasons.
This is something that non-techsavvy users would go nuts over how it seemlessly and easily works.
> A virtual display can now be made flex using --flex-display (or -x), meaning it can be resized dynamically along with the client window.
Amazing.
Yep. And the author of scrcpy is also one of the developers of VLC media player - another piece of software that just works.
scrcpy is amazing software something other people might not have realised you could possibly get Dex on some unsupported devices. I got it working on my Galaxy Z Flip 5 using scrcpy --new-display=1920x1080/284
https://github.com/wsvn53/scrcpy-mobile would allow you to control Android phone from an iOS device.
Amazing tool, but I had to stop using it. On my Samsung phone, I gesture based navigation. And every time I use scrcpy, the navigation stops working, and I have to restart the phone to get it working again. There's a ticket open but the developer has been unable to replicate the issue. Sadly until that is fixed, it is impossible to continue using it. The inconvenience (at least for me) is too real.
Please post a link to the issue.
Appreciate you replying. It's https://github.com/Genymobile/scrcpy/issues/6007
For the longest time I was so focused on getting to use an android as a "good" mic for a windows PC.
Scrcpy was a very hot contender, but I never got it to work well enough with low enough latency.
If you feel you should try this, just buy an audio interface and a cheap XLR mic.
> just buy an audio interface and a cheap XLR mic.
Don't do that. There are plenty of good USB microphones that don't need you to faff around with shitty XLR.
Amazing piece of software. I discovered it very recently when my screen OLED stopped working.
Did you manage to get it to work without a functioning screen on the phone?
I believe that unless your phone already has debugging enabled and the machine was already added a trusted machine for debugging, you're out of luck for controlling a phone with a dead screen?
Yeah my screen broken and I was in that situation and you're right; there's absolutely no way to access your phone. If you google it people will talk about workarounds like taking screenshots and accessing them over USB, but that no longer works because USB access requires confirmation on the screen.
Plugging in a display via USB also doesn't work because that also requires screen interaction to output to it (at least on Pixel phones).
The last thing I tried was plugging in a keyboard/mouse which do work automatically, but unfortunately I was using pattern unlock and there's no way to enter that via the keyboard (and good luck doing it with a mouse blind).
Finally the thing that you'd think should work - plugging in a new phone and transferring everything across ALSO requires you to confirm your pattern/PIN on the old phone.
It's absolutely insane. If anyone from Google is watching this.... people break screens!! Give them a way to access their stuff when the screen is broken.
The obvious easy solution is for the "transfer to a new phone" flow to allow entering the old phone's PIN/pattern ON THE NEW PHONE. Jesus.
I once dropped my phone like 40cm the 100th time and my screen went completely black. However, the touch still worked! After loads of time and comparing to another android phone, i managed to blindly navigate to that blind mode setting and enable it!
I have immense respect for those that are blind and need to interact this way. In the few days I used my phone this way I noticed multiple apps, especially my bank app with a keypad, had completely broken navigation and iirc not even numbered the actual buttons?! So it was a 'swipe right 9 times, double tap, swipe left 6 times' while the TTS was yelling nonsense!
This would have saved me a lot of mental anguish about 2 years ago, my phone screen died and I needed about 5 authenticators that were on it just to clock in at my (remote) job and get to what I needed to do the job.
Eventually I solved the issue by blind navigating to screen brightness and turning it all the way up, this made the screen act normal until I could replace it.
The lesson here is to not have a single point of such large failure, like I did.
This could have easily saved you all that trouble, as scrcpy is about a decade old.
Agreed with everyone else. Scrcpy is amazing and is so easy to use.
I had to read this three times before I could see this was not somehow a release of strcpy.
Neat. I went the other way and started writing an RDP server for Android, just so that I can use _one_ client for everything. It’s been tough going, but it’s passably usable now.
Its beautifully written C code. Very readable and grokable.
I love Scrcpy, and I miss it after switching from Android to iOS.
iOS screen sharing isn’t available in the EU. Thanks Apple.
What are the functions that the EU asks Apple has to supply.
1) Remove access from Android phone to macOS.
2) Remote access from iOS to Windows.
Then if both doesn't the EU regs also require remote access from Android phone to Windows
Plus same questions for Linux.
scrpy is lucky as not regulated so does not have to provide iOS.
Could Apple package this and thus allow its iOS version to be released in EU. Or would they still need 2.
Thanks EU
Scrcpy is fantastic, no idea how it Just Works™ so smoothly and painlessly, but it does.
Another gem to avoid using a tiny phone screen even more. Worked with my old LG V20 (Android 8.0). Perfectly smooth over USB 2.0. Reasonably smooth over Wi-Fi (adb tcpip 5555 while USB is connected, then scrcpy --tcpip=192.168.1.xxx_ wirelessly).
[TIL/xkcd#1053] scrcpy ("pronounced 'screen copy'") is "Display and control your Android device"
> mirrors Android devices (video and audio) connected via USB or TCP/IP and allows control using the computer's keyboard and mouse. It does not require root access or an app installed on the device. It works on Linux, Windows, and macOS
Coincidentally enough (or not) just yesterday while skimming through the Google laptop "Googlebook" announcement and thinking "Meh... none of that is new" and wondering if I could genuinely do all that with my current Linux/GrapheneOS setup I thought "Ok... maybe the Android windows is new" and I checked more scrcpy virtual display and display id which I use for mirroring Quest headsets. I thought "OK ok Google I give you that tiny feature" only to wake up this morning, nope, not even that.
That's not a new feature. ChromeOS has had app streaming since 2023. https://chromeunboxed.com/chromebook-app-streaming-guide-lim...
Similarly, the other features for the Googlebook are just normal features from Google's Android builds. The announcement is really that there will be a Chromebook Plus class of devices running the new Android-based ChromeOS, so everything in Android now comes to these devices for free, and apparently, most of the features from the current CheomeOS will be ported too. I just hope this means that Linux app support in Android will match Crostini by the end of the year.
Thanks for the clarification I'm clearly not deep enough in the ChromeOS/Android ecosystem to be aware of that.
Makes me wander what works or doesn't with AndroidXR too.
TIL Scrcpy is maintained by Genymobile and not Google. It's great for letting Claude Code operate your phone for doing QA tests
scrcpy new disappoints. Consistently stable, butter smooth & well maintained. Kudos to the maintainers.
s/new/never/ ? :)