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Phone Hub displays all kinds of useful controls for a paired Android phone.
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The “Tote” section shows recent files, and you can pin files here as well.
Google
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Sharing the environment between Chrome and Android, coming soon in a few months.
Google
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The clipboard.
Google
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Google Assistant’s “quick replies” allow you to highlight a word to show definitions.
Google
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The screen saver app.
Google
Google is celebrating the 10th anniversary of the Chromebook today, and the latest version of Chrome OS, version 89, celebrates this by bringing a bunch of features to the stable branch.
First is Phone Hub, which allows users to connect an Android phone and control it remotely via a pop-up panel from the system tray. The panel shows phone status such as battery and signal, controls shortcuts for hotspot, silence and to detect your phone. It also shows you two most recent Chrome tabs. Notifications from your phone will be sent to Chrome OS, and you can even reply to an SMS.
Sharing between devices is also getting better. Chrome OS now retrieves your Wi-Fi password list from an Android phone, so you only need to enter the super-secure password once and it will be shared with your other (Google OS) devices. Google’s nearby share in Airdrop style has been on an Android phone since last year and now Google says you can share between Chrome OS and Android in the coming months.
Chrome OS has a new “Tote” section that shows recently created files. It is found in the system tray, similar to the sections for the phone and quick settings. From the Files app, you can also attach important files to the Tote section for later. There is also a new screen capture tool that will drop files in the Tote section. You can take screenshots or videos, and the gallery tool has a new “annotate” feature so you can draw on the photos.
A few features look straight from Android, like the circular icon background for everything and a media player in the quick settings.
Pressing the “All Button” (Caps Lock Replacement of Chrome OS) + V will bring up the new clipboard that will save your last five copied icons. You can right-click on a word to set up ‘Quick Replies’, which is powered by a definition, translation or unit conversion by Google Assistant.
It’s about that. Chrome OS is still a simple system, but there are some short-and-sweet additions. Most of them seem to be Google’s best performing MacOS, the operating system that Chrome recently introduced to market share.
List by Google