There Is Now a Real Samsung DeX Alternative for iPhone

What DeX gives you

DeX puts a windowed desktop on the external display when you connect a compatible Galaxy. Taskbar, resizable app windows, a cursor for any Bluetooth or USB mouse, keyboard shortcuts. It's close enough to a laptop that plenty of people use it as one, and that's why "is there a DeX for iPhone" has been asked every year since 2017.

What iOS gives you instead

Mirroring. The phone's portrait screen scaled up, with black bars filling the sides of a 16:9 panel. Everything stays as it is on the phone: one app at a time, a portrait browser, and touch as the only way in. It's closer to casting than to a desktop, and no setting changes it, because iOS isn't drawing anything for the monitor. It duplicates what the phone draws for itself.

Apple restricts what apps may do with external displays, which is why almost nothing on the App Store even attempts this. XeOS uses what iOS does allow, and draws a complete environment into it.

How XeOS closes the gap

Instead of mirroring, XeOS: External Display Browser renders its own desktop at the display's native resolution and drives the screen directly. The phone stays in your hand as a trackpad, or gets out of the way entirely once you pair a mouse.

• A desktop browser with tabs, a bookmarks bar, downloads, saved passwords, reader mode, and an ad blocker on by default.
• Built-in apps: Files with a trash and zip support, Photos reading your iOS library, a PDF viewer with annotation, Office document preview, Notes, Calculator, Camera, a media player.
• Websites installed as apps, so Gmail, Sheets or YouTube live in the dock with their own icons and windows.
• Mouse, keyboard and shortcuts. Cursor, scroll wheel, ⌘-shortcuts, an app switcher and an overview, all covered in the input guide.
• Sessions that survive a restart, so windows and logins come back where you left them.

Side by side

The sixth row is the one that separates them. DeX is part of the operating system, so it can put any installed Android app in a window. No iOS app can do that for another iOS app, and none will until Apple allows it. What XeOS gives you instead is its own environment plus the entire web, which for desk work covers most of what people open.

Getting started

1. Connect the display. USB-C to HDMI on iPhone 15 and later, a Lightning Digital AV Adapter on older models, or AirPlay if you'd rather go wireless.
2. Open XeOS with the screen connected. It takes the display over in landscape at the resolution you choose.
3. Pair a Bluetooth mouse and keyboard in iOS Settings › Bluetooth. The cursor appears on the external screen, and typing goes to whatever window has focus.
4. Put the sites you use in the dock so they open as apps rather than tabs.