The Pixel Tablet 2 would’ve been great with Android’s new PC-like keyboard and mouse controls

Right after blowing our minds with the new AI-powered Voice Translate feature on the Pixel 10, Google went and dashed our hopes of seeing a new Pixel Tablet anytime soon. The company told Bloomberg that it has “paused development on a tablet overhaul until it figures out a meaningful future for the category,” which sure sounds like Google has given up on tablets once again. That’s a huge shame, though, because Android has gotten way better on tablets since Google introduced the first-gen Pixel Tablet. And with the next big Android release in December, it’s poised to get even better, thanks to a slew of new PC-like features.

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Over the past couple of years, Google has been improving Android’s support for peripherals like keyboards, mice, and touchpads. This effort was partially aimed at tablets with keyboard cases — a setup Google planned to launch itself before scrapping the Pixel Tablet 2. In fact, the company had also planned a keyboard case for the original Pixel Tablet but canceled it before launch over quality concerns.

However, these improvements aren’t just for tablets. They’re part of Google’s long-term goal to have Android running on PCs in an effort to combine Chrome OS and Android into a single platform. To fulfill this ambitious goal, Google has been rapidly implementing new PC-like keyboard and mouse features, many of which will go live in the second quarterly release of Android 16. These include the ability to create custom app launch shortcuts, set corner shortcuts similar to Hot Corners on macOS, and control how the mouse cursor behaves when scrolling.

Custom keyboard shortcuts for launching your favorite apps

For years, Android has offered a variety of keyboard shortcuts to control system actions or launch applications. Although Android 16 let you customize the key combinations for these shortcuts, it didn’t let you create new ones; you were limited to the predefined list. For instance, if you wanted to launch an app other than Calculator, Calendar, Chrome, Contacts, Gmail, Maps, or YouTube — the seven apps with built-in shortcuts — you were out of luck.

Thankfully, that’s no longer the case in Android 16 QPR2. While digging through Android 16 QPR2 Beta 1, I spotted a new “+Add shortcut” button at the bottom of the “App shortcuts” list in the keyboard shortcuts menu. Tapping this button opens the customization menu as before, but now with the added ability to assign a custom keyboard shortcut to any app on your device.

For example, I was able to map ‘Meta + Ctrl + T’ to launch the Linux Terminal app, which didn’t have a predefined shortcut.

While there’s a 10-app custom shortcut limit, this new feature will still be immensely useful for anyone using a physical keyboard with their Android device. However, this customization menu is only accessible on tablets — more specifically, on devices with screens larger than 600dp. That means if you want to use it on your phone, say, to customize the Clicks Keyboard to launch your favorite app, you’ll need to temporarily change your screen’s density. Fortunately, that’s easy to do by adjusting the “minimum width” in developer options.

Custom corner shortcuts to quickly show notifications and more

MacBooks have a feature called Hot Corners that allows users to perform certain actions when they move the cursor to a corner of the screen. I recently revealed that Google has been working on its own version of this feature called Action Corners, and it is now live in Android 16 QPR2 Beta 1.

In Android 16 QPR2, you can configure Action Corners by going to the new “customize corner shortcuts” page under either Settings > System > Touchpad or Settings > System > Mouse, depending on whether you have a touchpad or a mouse connected. On this page, you can assign a unique action to each of the screen’s four corners: bottom-left, bottom-right, top-left, and top-right. These actions include going Home, opening recent apps, expanding the notification panel, or expanding the Quick Settings panel.

Here’s a short video demonstrating the new ‘Action Corners’ feature on Android:

This feature will save you time on tablets and PCs, as you’ll be able to multitask, check notifications, or change settings more quickly.

Fine-tune mouse scrolling and button press behavior

Android 16 QPR2 also brings a plethora of new settings for adjusting the button and scroll behavior of external mice. The new scrolling-related features include a toggle for cursor acceleration, a toggle to reverse the scroll direction, and a toggle for controlled scrolling (accompanied by a slider to adjust the scrolling speed). The new button-related features include a toggle to swap the primary and secondary mouse buttons and a handful of new autoclick features.

Here’s a list of every mouse-related setting in Android 16 QPR2, followed by a side-by-side comparison with Android 16 to show how much has been added:

• Mouse settings in Android 16 QPR2 (Beta 1)
  • Cursor acceleration (new!)
  • Pointer speed
  • Swap primary mouse button (new!)
  • Cursor & touchpad accessibility
    • Cursor size
    • Cursor color
    • Autoclick (Dwell timing)
      • Autoclick shortcut (new!)
      • Delay before click (new!)
      • Click area (new!)
      • Ignore minor cursor movement (new!)
      • Use left-click as the default action (new!)
  • Reverse scrolling (new!)
  • Controlled scrolling (new!)
  • Scrolling speed (new!)
  • Customize corner shortcuts (new!)

Finally, Android 16 QPR2 introduces a small upgrade to the three-finger touchpad tap gesture introduced in Android 16 QPR1. You can now configure the gesture to open any app of your choice. While this isn’t as powerful as the new keyboard app shortcuts because it’s limited to a single app, it’s still handy to have another way to launch an app.

While I’m happy that Google is working to make Android better on PCs, these new features make the company’s cancellation of the Pixel Tablet 2 all the more frustrating. A new Pixel Tablet would have been great, and not just because of these keyboard and mouse improvements. Since the original Pixel Tablet’s launch in 2023, Google has introduced several awesome features that would have greatly improved the out-of-the-box productivity experience on a sequel. These include lock screen widget support, a new smart home control screen saver, and desktop windowing — not to mention all the revamped tablet apps.

An upgraded Pixel Tablet 2 with more RAM and the Tensor G5 would have been amazing. It could have run full-fledged desktop Linux apps much faster, even on external displays. But it seems the poor sales of the original Pixel Tablet deflated Google’s enthusiasm for a follow-up, so it’s up to brands like Samsung and OnePlus to carry the mantle. Fortunately, all the keyboard and mouse improvements I mentioned will be available to other brands, though we likely won’t see them incorporated into their software until Android 17.

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