After a short delay, Chrome OS 98 is starting to roll out to the stable channel. The new release brings a handful of changes, including new emoji, expanded virtual desks shortcuts, and an overhauled language settings menu ahead of the big Chrome OS 100 milestone. A rollout to currently-supported Chromebooks has started — though it may take a little while for all devices to get it.
A new keyboard shortcut to switch between virtual desks
If you’re a fan of using the Virtual Desk feature on your Chromebook, you’ll love what Chrome OS 98 has brought for end-users. You can now switch from one Desk to another on Chrome OS seamlessly with a hotkey. This shortcut now makes it easier to swap between virtual desks. Just press Shift + Search + [1 through 8 depending on the virtual desk number] and you’ll instantly be teleported to another desk! You can still, of course, just jump between them with a four-finger swipe left or right on the touchpad, but this new method means you can skip desks while hopping around. This paves the way for utter convenience to prevail by allowing users to multitask like never before. Virtual Desks will enable you to be more productive than ever by working on several things at once. They’re great for organizing your workspace, and we recommend the functionality on a day-to-day basis.
Choose where screen captures are saved
There's now an improved screen capture tool that now allows you to select which location new captures will be sent to when created. Before, they were automatically dumped into the Downloads folder in the Chrome OS Files app, but for anyone who is familiar with how said local folder works, anything that resides there is wiped clean if your Chromebook crashes and burns. That’s why the ability to select a save location in Google Drive or on an external storage device like a thumb drive or hard drive is so essential and welcome.
To set this up, simply open the screen capture tool from the quick settings menu at the bottom-right side of your display (click the clock after updating!), and once it appears, click the cogwheel seen below to call up its options. Once you’ve done so, you should see the new “Select folder…” option under the “Save to” menu. Selecting a new location via the Filepicker that appears will cause all future screen captures to be housed in your newly chosen location!
Usable emojis
You got that right. Emojis have seemingly made their way on Chromebooks to implement effective communication. This world-renowned networking functionality has been long-wanted on Chrome OS, and it’s finally here. Unfortunately, you will have to enable the following flag in your Chrome browser to get the feature. Further down the road, hopefully, we’ll get a stable release for emojis in Chrome OS with through-and-through stability.
Make sure to enable related flags, too, for the best results. Once you’ve done it, double-click in any text box to find the “Emoji” option. Click on it to launch a small-scale window and choose from the hundreds of different emojis available to play around with and have fun. With this being said, if, on any occasion, your system starts to lag in performance, switch the flag right off and wait for its stable channel release.
More features and improvements
There are also many bug fixes with this release that should make things more stable for day-to-day use and development on things like noise suppression are moving along swimmingly. Additionally, there is an improved language settings, a dark mode for the virtual keyboard, better mouse and keyboard support for Android apps, and luckily, the Google Play Store will no longer show results for apps in the Chromebook launcher via the Everything button.
After a short delay, Chrome OS 98 is starting to roll out to the stable channel. The new release brings a handful of changes, including new emoji, expanded virtual desks shortcuts, and an overhauled language settings menu ahead of the big Chrome OS 100 milestone. A rollout to currently-supported Chromebooks has started — though it may take a little while for all devices to get it.
A new keyboard shortcut to switch between virtual desks
If you’re a fan of using the Virtual Desk feature on your Chromebook, you’ll love what Chrome OS 98 has brought for end-users. You can now switch from one Desk to another on Chrome OS seamlessly with a hotkey. This shortcut now makes it easier to swap between virtual desks. Just press Shift + Search + [1 through 8 depending on the virtual desk number] and you’ll instantly be teleported to another desk! You can still, of course, just jump between them with a four-finger swipe left or right on the touchpad, but this new method means you can skip desks while hopping around. This paves the way for utter convenience to prevail by allowing users to multitask like never before. Virtual Desks will enable you to be more productive than ever by working on several things at once. They’re great for organizing your workspace, and we recommend the functionality on a day-to-day basis.
Choose where screen captures are saved
There's now an improved screen capture tool that now allows you to select which location new captures will be sent to when created. Before, they were automatically dumped into the Downloads folder in the Chrome OS Files app, but for anyone who is familiar with how said local folder works, anything that resides there is wiped clean if your Chromebook crashes and burns. That’s why the ability to select a save location in Google Drive or on an external storage device like a thumb drive or hard drive is so essential and welcome.
To set this up, simply open the screen capture tool from the quick settings menu at the bottom-right side of your display (click the clock after updating!), and once it appears, click the cogwheel seen below to call up its options. Once you’ve done so, you should see the new “Select folder…” option under the “Save to” menu. Selecting a new location via the Filepicker that appears will cause all future screen captures to be housed in your newly chosen location!
Usable emojis
You got that right. Emojis have seemingly made their way on Chromebooks to implement effective communication. This world-renowned networking functionality has been long-wanted on Chrome OS, and it’s finally here. Unfortunately, you will have to enable the following flag in your Chrome browser to get the feature. Further down the road, hopefully, we’ll get a stable release for emojis in Chrome OS with through-and-through stability.
chrome://flags#enable-cros-ime-system-emoji-picker-extension
Make sure to enable related flags, too, for the best results. Once you’ve done it, double-click in any text box to find the “Emoji” option. Click on it to launch a small-scale window and choose from the hundreds of different emojis available to play around with and have fun. With this being said, if, on any occasion, your system starts to lag in performance, switch the flag right off and wait for its stable channel release.
More features and improvements
There are also many bug fixes with this release that should make things more stable for day-to-day use and development on things like noise suppression are moving along swimmingly. Additionally, there is an improved language settings, a dark mode for the virtual keyboard, better mouse and keyboard support for Android apps, and luckily, the Google Play Store will no longer show results for apps in the Chromebook launcher via the Everything button.
0 Votes
0 Comments
Login to post a comment