More Chromebooks Get Early Access To Play Store – Here Is How To Enable It

I know that you all are waiting for the Pixel announcement that is scheduled to happened in few hours from now. Would you like to do that on a Chromebook that runs Android apps too?

Update: This is working on Dev channel for Toshiba Chromebook 2015, if you have the Developer Mode on.

Note: You need one of those “promised” Chromebooks for this to work.

Reports are coming in that Google Play Store now works on a bunch of new Chromebooks. The current confirmed list is as follows:

1. Acer Chromebook 14
2. Acer Chromebook 15
3. Samsung Chromebook 3
4. Toshiba CB2 2015

This is currently available on Canary channel, which is extremely unstable at times, and sometimes even, unusable. So, proceed with caution, and I recommend not enabling this on your primary device.

Enable Play Store on Any Chromebook

First step, switch your Chromebook to Canary channel if you are not yet on that channel.

Now, follow these steps:

1. Press CTRL + ALT + T to open the command prompt.
2. Type shell to enter the shell prompt.
3. Now type the command

    echo "--enable-arc" > /usr/local/chrome_dev.conf;

4. Next, type the command

    mount -o bind /usr/local/chrome_dev.conf /etc/chrome_dev.conf

5. Press CTRL + SHIFT + Q twice, or restart your Chromebook.

With that, you should have access to Google Play Store on your device. Google Play should automatically launch the first time you login after the going through those steps. If not, go to Settings and look for the setting that enables Google Play.

Go ahead and try this on your secondary Chromebook, if you have one of the promised Chromebooks. If you get this working on any Chromebook other than what I have listed, please drop a comment!

Thanks Justin Slatten and Brent Sullivan

Update: I got this working on my Toshiba Chromebook 2015. It was very unstable, so I had to switch back to Dev channel. I am hoping that it will be available on the Dev channel in few weeks.

To switch back to Stable channel from Canary channel, replace canary-channel  in the command with stable-channel. The Chromebook will complete the update and ask you to restart.