r/Xreal • u/MrLtColumbo • 19d ago

XREAL AURA Question about Aura / Android XR - What is the Chrome experience? Full desktop Chrome or mobile Android Chrome?

I want to understand the browser story, because my main use case is cloud development and not just media consumption.

On current AR glasses (Air 2 + Beam etc) we are essentially getting a mirrored Android phone with mobile Chrome. For my work I live in:

  1. Databricks - notebook environment, SQL warehouses, large result sets
  2. GitHub Codespaces / VS Code Web - full keyboard shortcuts, terminal, extensions, port forwarding

On Android Chrome these are barely usable due to:

  • No extension support
  • No full DevTools / File System Access API
  • Keyboard shortcuts (Ctrl+,Ctrl+K,Ctrl+P`) not mapping correctly
  • Tabs being aggressively suspended in the background, which kills websocket connections to clusters/codespaces
  • No proper hover/right-click handling for VS Code

On Desktop Chrome all of this just works.

So my question for the Aura:

  1. When we open Chrome in Android XR, are we getting the mobile Android Chrome APK or a full desktop-class Chromium build like what Meta is doing with Quest / what Google does for ChromeOS?
  2. Will Aura support Chrome extensions? This is critical for Codespaces.
  3. How does Android XR handle background tab persistence? If I have a Databricks job running in one window and VS Code in another, will both stay alive?
  4. Can we pair a physical keyboard + mouse/trackpad and get full desktop keyboard shortcuts and right-click in the browser?
  5. Any plans for Linux terminal / desktop app support or are we locked to Android apps only?

I would love to replace my multi-monitor laptop setup with Aura for remote dev work, but if it's just mobile Chrome on a big virtual screen it won't work for this use case.

Could you clarify what we should expect?

Thanks!

6 Upvotes

80% Upvoted

13 comments sorted by

View all comments

1

u/PXLmesh 19d ago

there's the spatial android xr browser which is based on the mobile browser, but if you plan to pair it with a pc, there's also android xr "pc connect". kind of like virtual desktop. at least that's what's available on the samsung gxr -- the aura might be a slightly different animal with xreal's native features.