Google’s Chrome operating system has the advantage of including support for Android and the platform’s extensive app collection. Now Chromebooks are finally being updated to Android 11 to offer new features and better functionality, but the update is currently only in beta.
Android 11 on Chromebooks is nothing important, but adds two important new features. First, it contains support for a dark theme, but one that is currently limited.
In Chrome OS 89, the first update to deliver this new Android version, a flag is added to the Android Developer Options menu that allows a dark theme for Android applications designed to respect the system setting. When enabled, it means that Chrome OS will display apps like the Play Store and the Google Home app in the dark mode, as shown below. However, it does not work on everything, and especially, it comes at a time when Chrome OS itself does not yet have a wide dark mode support. Yet it has made progress and is great to see.
With the arrival of Android 11, Chrome OS is also changing the way it manages Android applications in general. Now Android applications run on a virtual machine, just like Linux and Parallels for Windows. It means two things. First, security is significantly improved because this change makes it harder for malicious actors to use Android apps as an access point. Furthermore, it can pave the way for faster Android updates across Chrome OS.
In addition, Android 11 on Chrome OS also allows for improved scaling within apps. This is again a developer flag where you can manually adjust the uniform scaling factor of Android apps running on your Chromebook. Remarkably, as Android Police brings out, Google tried to fix this in some recent versions of Chrome OS, v86 and v87, but they were pulled before a wide release because they actively broke Android apps.
When modifications are applied with this option, you will notice the changes in font sizes and the general layout of Android applications. It may not be necessary for every app, but it is definitely an option we are glad that Google has finally worked out.
This update starts now, but Android 11 only appears on some boards. So far, it contains the “hatch” board, which contains virtually anything with a 10th-generation Intel processor. In the screenshots above, we use an HP C640 Pro Chromebook, which uses a tenth generation Intel Core i7 vPro chip.
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