Your smartphone is your smartphone, your tablet is usually your tablet, but your desktop, well you probably share it sometimes with friends, family, and co-workers. That’s one of the reasons why Android, the popular Linux-based device operating system has never been seriously considered for the desktop. Without multi-user support, it’s not great for a shared computer. That may be changing. We now know that Google has been slowly introducing multi-user support into Android.

There’s never been any question that Android users want multi-user support. A quick look through the Android bug tracker shows that users have been demanding multi-user support since 2011. Ron Amadeo, a writer for Android Police, an online publication dedicated to Android, has dug into the Android Open Source Project (AOSP) for code for Android 4.0 and 4.1, which was publicly released in early July,, and he’s found clues that Android multi-user support is being built into Jelly Bean, Android 4.1. Indeed, some of it is already working today.

Officially, Google tells me that they “don’t have anything to announce at this time!” But, while they may not have any announcement, the code speaks for itself.

Desktop Android? Multi-user Android support is on its way. More >