FEATURE_01EXTEND
A real monitor
Extends the Windows desktop instead of mirroring it, at the tablet's native resolution and up to its highest refresh rate.
CH 05 · OPEN SOURCE · WINDOWS + ANDROID
TabDisplay
Your Android tablet, wired in as a real Windows monitor.
One USB cable, the panel's native resolution and refresh rate, and touch and pen that Windows treats as its own. Free and open source.
Windows 10/11 · Android 8+ · MIT licence
The tablet sat in a drawer
A Samsung tablet bought for the office, a desktop PC with no Wi-Fi, and no built-in way to use one as a wired monitor for the other. So we built it.
ERR // WHAT STOOD IN THE WAY
- No Wi-Fi on the PC, and Samsung Second Screen is wireless only
- Wireless adapters lagged and stuttered
- No wired display mode on the tablet, and none in Windows
OK // WITH TABDISPLAY
- One USB cable, straight into the PC
- Native resolution and refresh rate
- Touch and S Pen as real Windows input
On the bench
- Frame rate
- 120 fps
- Native resolution
- 2960×1848
- PC to tablet and back
- ~21 ms
- Touch points
- 10 + pen
Measured on the author's setup: RTX 3070, Galaxy Tab S10 Ultra, USB 3.
Signal chain
Every frame stays on the GPU until it reaches the cable, and the tablet acknowledges frames one by one so lag never piles up.
- STAGE 01Virtual monitorVirtual Display Driver gives Windows a monitor to extend to.
- STAGE 02CaptureDXGI Desktop Duplication reads it as a GPU texture, with no CPU copies.
- STAGE 03EncodeNVENC or Media Foundation encodes hardware HEVC or H.264 at low latency.
- STAGE 04Cableadb forward carries one TCP stream through the USB cable.
- STAGE 05DecodeAndroid MediaCodec decodes in hardware, straight to the screen.
Return pathAcknowledgements, touch and pen travel back up the same cable and land in Windows through InjectSyntheticPointerInput, as real touch and pen events.
What it does
FEATURE_02INPUT
Touch and pen
Ten-finger touch, plus stylus pressure, tilt, hover and side button, with palm rejection while the pen is near. The cursor returns where it was after a tap.
FEATURE_03TRAY
Plug and play
A tray app with an On/Off switch. Plug in and the monitor appears; unplug and Windows goes back to your usual screens.
FEATURE_04 · UPTIME
Recovers itself
Starts with Windows, remembers its state, and recovers on its own from cable drops and app restarts.
What you need
- Windows
- Windows 10 (1903 or newer) or 11, 64-bit
- Graphics
- A GPU with a hardware video encoder: NVIDIA, AMD or Intel
- Virtual monitor
- Virtual Display Driver (free, signed)
- adb
- Android SDK Platform-Tools
- Android
- Android 8.0 or newer, tablet or phone, USB debugging on
- Cable
- A USB data cable straight into the PC (USB 3 recommended)
Quick start
- Install the driverAdd your tablet's resolution and refresh rate to Virtual Display Driver.
- Get the appPut TabDisplay.exe next to the Platform-Tools files.
- Install the APKInstall it on the tablet and turn on USB debugging.
- Plug inRun TabDisplay.exe, plug the tablet in and accept the prompt.
FAQ_
Yes. It is open source under the MIT licence. Download it, or build both apps yourself from the source on GitHub.
Need it on
your hardware?
Ask for a feature on GitHub, or have SONO build a version around your own devices and workflow.