Washington: Marking the 10-year anniversary of Chromebooks, tech giant Google recently unveiled a bunch of new features for its Chrome OS.
According to The Verge, one of the biggest addition updates is the new Phone Hub feature, which connects an Android phone to a Chromebook, allowing Chrome OS to respond to texts, check a phone’s battery life, enable its Wi-Fi hotspot, and locate a device easily.
The New phone hub, is going to be packed into a taskbar widget to show user’s recent Chrome tabs that they have been browsing on their phone. It seems like this will turn out to be a super useful feature for Android and Chromebook owners.
Google will also be enabling its Wi-Fi Sync feature on more devices, allowing users to connect to Wi-Fi networks that they have already configured and used on their Android phone and other Chrome OS devices.
Nearby share between Chromebooks and other Android and Chrome OS devices, is yet another addition to Chrome OS. Similar to Airdrop, Nearby Share will let people send and receive files between devices. Google has said that this feature will arrive in Chrome OS in the coming months, finally providing its laptop OS with a full AirDrop competitor.
Other than these, the company will also be adding a new Screen Capture tool into the Quick Settings menu in Chrome OS. The feature will let users record their screen or take screenshots and access them quickly in a “Tote” space from the Chrome OS Shelf.
The clipboard feature is also going to improve, allowing users to save five recent items to paste elsewhere without switching windows. The Launcher Key will provide access to this updated clipboard experience.
Quick Answers, which is another new addition, lets users right-click a word in Chrome OS to get a definition, translation, or unit conversion. It’s very similar to what exists in macOS today.
As per The Verge, Google is even improving the virtual desktops feature of Chrome OS named, Desks. On rebooting a Chromebook, it will now restore all windows to their correct virtual desktops, and users can also right-click at the top of an open window to send apps to a different virtual desktop.