Google marks ten years of Chromebooks by introducing new features for Chrome OS today. The biggest addition is a new Phone Hub feature that connects an Android phone to a Chromebook. It allows Chrome OS users to respond to texts, check the battery life of a phone, turn on the Wi-Fi hotspot, and easily locate a device.
Phone Hub is packaged in a taskbar widget that even expands to show you recent Chrome tabs you’ve searched for on your phone. It looks like it will be an extremely useful feature for Android and Chromebook owners. Google is also enabling its Wi-Fi Sync feature on multiple devices, so you can connect to Wi-Fi networks that you have already configured and used on your Android phone and other Chrome OS devices.
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Another important addition to Chrome OS is a close share between Chromebooks and other Android and Chrome OS devices. Like AirDrop, Near Share will allow people to send and receive files between devices. Google says it will be coming to Chrome OS in the coming months and will eventually offer a full AirDrop competitor for its laptop.
Elsewhere, Google is also adding a new screen capture tool to the Chrome OS pop-up menu. As the name suggests, you can record your screen or take screenshots and quickly access a “Tote” space from the Chrome OS shelf.
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The Clipboard is also enhanced in Chrome OS, which allows you to save five recent items to paste elsewhere without switching from window. The Launcher Key provides access to this updated clipboard experience. Quick Replies is another new add-on that lets you right-click on a word in Chrome OS to get a definition, translation, or conversion of units. It looks a lot like what exists in macOS today.
Google even enhances the virtual desktops feature of Chrome OS – Desks. When you reload a Chromebook, it will now restore all the windows to their real virtual desktops, and you can also right-click at the top of an open window to send apps to another virtual desktop.
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Most of these new Chrome OS add-ons clearly play into what already exists on Windows and macOS, but these are welcome additions for those who rely on Chrome OS every day. Google first launched a series of Chromebooks in 2011 in partnership with Samsung and Acer. There are now Chromebooks from every major PC maker, and Google promises to launch 50 new Chromebooks by 2021.