Google’s Chrome OS has the benefit of together with help for Android and the platform’s huge app assortment. Now, Chromebooks are lastly getting up to date to Android 11 to carry some new options and higher performance, however the replace is in beta-only in the interim.
Android 11 on Chromebooks isn’t a serious overhaul to something, but it surely does add two key new options. First, that features help for a darkish theme, however one which’s at the moment restricted.
In Chrome OS 89, the primary replace to ship this new Android model, a flag is added to the Android developer choices menu that permits darkish theme for Android apps which can be designed to respect the system setting. When it’s enabled, which means Chrome OS will present apps just like the Play Retailer and the Google Dwelling app in darkish mode, as pictured under. This doesn’t work on all the pieces, although, and notably, it comes at a time when Chrome OS itself remains to be missing wide dark mode support. Nonetheless, it’s progress made and nice to see.
With the arrival of Android 11, Chrome OS can be altering the way it runs Android apps generally. Now, Android apps run in a virtual machine, very similar to Linux and Parallels for Home windows. This implies two issues. For one, safety is vastly improved, as this transformation makes it more durable for malicious actors to make use of Android apps as an entry level. Additional, this has the potential to pave the way in which for sooner Android updates on Chrome OS.
Past that, Android 11 on Chrome OS additionally permits for improved scaling inside apps. That is, once more, a developer flag the place you may manually tweak the uniform scale issue of Android apps working in your Chromebook. Notably, as Android Police brings out, Google made an try to repair this in a few latest variations of Chrome OS, v86 and v87, however they have been pulled earlier than a large launch as a result of they actively broke Android apps.
When adjustments are utilized utilizing this feature, you’ll discover the adjustments to font sizes and the general structure of Android apps. This won’t be wanted for each app, but it surely’s definitely an choice we’re glad to see Google having lastly labored out.
This replace is rolling out now, however Android 11 is just exhibiting up on some boards. Thus far, that features the “hatch” board, which incorporates just about something with a Tenth-Gen Intel processor. Within the screenshots above, we have been utilizing an HP C640 Professional Chromebook, which makes use of a Tenth-Technology Intel Core i7 vPro chip.
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