External Display BrowserWork & study4 min read

How to Study and Work From Your iPhone: Google Drive, Docs, Sheets and Office Files on a Big Screen

Writing an essay in a phone-sized text box is miserable. On a 24-inch monitor with a real keyboard it's just… writing. This guide covers using Google Drive, Docs and Sheets properly from an iPhone or iPad, opening Word, Excel and PowerPoint files you've been sent, and keeping documents somewhere you can actually reach them.

Set the display up first with the connection guide, and import your passwords so signing in to Google takes a second rather than a minute.

Google Drive, Docs and Sheets

The browser in XeOS is a desktop browser on a desktop-sized screen, which is the entire trick: Google's web apps serve you their full interface rather than the cut-down mobile one. Sheets gets its formula bar and full menus. Docs gets the ruler, outline pane and proper keyboard shortcuts. Drive gets a grid you can actually navigate.

Open the Browser from the dock.
Go to drive.google.com and sign in.
Open a document. It behaves like it does on a laptop.

The XeOS browser window showing a full desktop web page, with several tabs and a bookmarks bar above it. — Tabs, a bookmarks bar, and a full-size window, the reason web apps serve you their desktop interface.

A few things make this much nicer day to day:

Put Drive, Docs and Sheets on the bookmarks bar (Cmd Shift B to show it). Two clicks to any of them.
Install them as dock apps, ⋯ › Add Site to Dock gives each its own icon and its own window, so Sheets isn't buried behind six tabs.
Use the keyboard. A Bluetooth keyboard plus Google's shortcuts is most of the productivity gain.
Zoom per site. Cmd + and Cmd − set zoom for that site and remember it, useful for making a spreadsheet readable from a distance.

If a control in Google's interface won't take a click, usually a sign-in step or an embedded add-on, that's the frame limitation described in Device Layout Mode. Grey button, do the step on the phone, come straight back.

Multiple windows, one screen

This is where a big screen earns itself. Detach a tab into its own floating window and you can have your notes beside your source, or a spreadsheet beside the document quoting it.

A spreadsheet open in the Document Viewer on the left and a web page open in the browser on the right, side by side on one external display. — A spreadsheet beside the page you're quoting. Windows you arrange, not one app at a time.

Right-click any tab and choose Open in Floating Window. Windows snap to screen edges when you drag them there, and Ctrl Tab cycles between everything open.

The window switcher overlay showing thumbnails of open windows. — Ctrl Tab to switch; Ctrl ↑ for an overview of everything open.

Word, Excel and PowerPoint files

For files people email you, XeOS previews Office documents directly, no account, no upload, no network. Double-click a .docx, .xlsx or .pptx in Files and it opens.

An Excel workbook open in the XeOS Document Viewer, showing a formatted table of regional figures with column headers, a totals row and two sheet tabs along the bottom. — A real `.xlsx` workbook, formatting, number formats and multiple sheets, on a screen big enough to read it.

Spreadsheets keep their sheet tabs, so a multi-sheet workbook is fully navigable. Word documents keep their headings, lists and tables:

A Word document open in the XeOS Document Viewer, showing headings, body text, a bulleted list and a table. — A `.docx` report, rendered with its headings, lists and tables intact.

This is a preview: it's built for reading, checking and presenting from, not for heavy editing. When you need to edit an Office file, the practical route is to open it in Google Docs or Sheets in the browser, work there, and export back.

PDFs, properly

The PDF viewer is a full one, not a thumbnail preview. Page thumbnails, search, zoom, text selection and copy, and annotation tools.

The XeOS PDF viewer with a document open and a toolbar of view, annotate, shapes, insert, form and redact tools. — Reading, annotating and filling in a PDF, on a screen big enough to see it.

Select text and copy it with Cmd C or the right-click menu; it goes to the system clipboard, so you can paste it straight into a Google Doc in the next window. Annotations and filled form fields save back to the file in place, and Cmd S saves like any desktop app.

Where to keep your documents

The thing that makes this a workflow rather than a demo: mount the folder your work actually lives in.

The Files app browsing a mounted iCloud Drive folder. — A mounted iCloud Drive folder, open, edit and save in place.

Mount your iCloud Drive documents folder and you can open a file, work on it and save it back, with the change syncing to every other device you own. The same works for a folder on the phone, or a USB drive for big files.

Notes and quick capture

For anything that doesn't deserve a document, there's a built-in Notes app with rich text formatting, and a plain text editor for code and configuration files.

The Notes app and Calculator open side by side on the XeOS desktop. — Notes and a calculator, for the things that aren't worth opening Drive for.

A study setup that works

Monitor, USB-C multiport adapter (so the phone charges), Bluetooth keyboard and mouse.
Drive, Docs and Sheets added to the dock as apps.
Your working folder mounted from iCloud Drive.
Reading material saved to the reading list as you find it.
Content scale in Settings › Display tuned so text is comfortable at your desk distance.

That's a workstation you can carry in a pocket and plug into any screen, a library, a hotel, a friend's spare monitor.

XeOS: External Display Browser turns an iPhone or iPad into a full desktop on any monitor, TV or projector.

Download XeOS on the App Store

Common questions

Can I edit Word files directly?

The built-in Office support is a preview, meant for reading and presenting. For editing, open the file in Google Docs or Sheets in the browser.

Does Google Docs offline mode work?

Google's own offline support depends on browser storage, and site storage does persist here, but for genuinely offline work, a PDF or a local file is the dependable option.