Google Assistant on Chrome OS is limited to Pixelbook at the moment. It does not have a proper integration with Chrome OS yet. On Pixelbook, Assistant launches as an additional layer. My theory is that Google is still working on integrating the Assistant with Chrome OS, bringing it to the notification area, along with other apps. […]
Chrome OS Will Integrate messages.android.com as a Progressive Web App
Android Messages integration showed up as a Chrome OS flag a long time ago. Soon after that, we saw “Better Together” a complete package that was designed to make your Chromebook and Android phone work “together” Chrome OS Settings app currently shows a new section called “Connected Devices” which is what “Better Together” is used […]
Chrome Adds Built-in “Lazy Load” for Images and Cross-origin Frames
Google Chrome will soon add built-in lazy load features. The plan is to bring native lazy loading for images and cross-origin frames to Chrome. There are two flags for this feature available in the latest Canary channel version of Chrome and Chrome OS. According to Wikipedia,”Lazy loading is a design pattern commonly used in computer […]
Chrome OS Lock Screen Notifications to Get Android-like Controls
When I wrote about this feature last week, I told you all that we will most likely see Android-like options for Chrome OS lock screen notifications too. We are yet to see those notifications look like they do in Android, but today, I can confirm that there will be additional settings for these lock screen […]
Stanford’s “HabitLab” Helps You Build Better Habits Online
Google Released Android 9.0 “Pie” yesterday. A feature that is promised as part of 9.0 is what Google calls “Digital Wellbeing“. Apple and Facebook are also working on similar projects to reduce distractions on the web and on the phone. Chrome already has a bunch of extensions to help you spend less time on social […]
Google Chrome’s Toolbar has a “Trusted Area”
If you have played around with Google Chrome’s upcoming Material Design interface, you might have noticed a vertical line dividing the space where all the extension icons are displayed. Looks like this line has a purpose. The area on the right hand side of this line is called “Trusted Area”. As the name suggests, this […]
Lock Screen Notifications Arrive on Chrome OS
This was something that Google should have added before the first Chrome OS tablet arrived. There was a flag available in chrome://flags, but nothing was functional. Now, a few weeks after the release of the first tablet, lock screen notifications are finally working on Chrome OS. The Flag This has been around for a while […]
Chromebooks to Get Google’s Android Camera App
Almost an year ago, I got a chance to speak to someone from Google who had worked on the Pixel phone’s camera. This is what I told him. “I’m a huge fan of Android. However, if someone asks me for a smartphone recommendation and mention that taking photos is one of their top priorities, I […]
Chrome OS to Include “eSpeak” Speech Synthesiser to Support More Languages
Chrome OS is adding eSpeak, a compact open source software speech synthesizer for English and other languages, to expand the list of supported Text-to-Speech languages. According to the eSpeak project page, “eSpeak uses a “formant synthesis” method. This allows many languages to be provided in a small size. The speech is clear, and can be […]
Picture-in-Picture Extended to Extensions and Chrome Apps
Google Chrome’s Picture-in-Picture is being extended to extensions and Chrome Apps. I am trying really hard to imagine how those windows will look like, especially extensions. We will have to wait and see how that’s going to look like. This showed up as two different code commits this week. The Code The first to reach […]