ChromeOS will be rolled out to operating system users in the coming days. Faster search, AI reading assistance and improved Autocorrect are among the new features. It should also make it easier for newcomers to get started with Google’s OS.
Those using ChromeOS will most likely use more products within the Google suite. To simplify integration for those users, the search function within Google Files will now also look into the user’s Drive folder. This is customizable as desired.
More accessibility
Two ChromeOS features stand out in terms of accessibility. Google makes the point that 360 billion PDFs are not accessible to people who rely on a read-aloud feature. Therefore, it wants to use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) to ensure that these users can access the content of a PDF document. There are already applications that can do this, but Google now logically wants to offer this capability at the OS level. This form of image-to-text will also make its way to the Chrome browser in the next few months.
The Autocorrect feature is now on by default in apps that are compatible with it. In addition, there is now support for physical keyboards; at the same time, Autocorrect is now faster and more comprehensive for virtual keyboards.
Onboarding
Despite having gained popularity, ChromeOS remains a relative niche among operating systems. Therefore, Google has tweaked the setup wizard to get novice users up and running faster. The onboarding process now gives more opportunities to customize things ahead of time, from touchpad scroll direction to display size, should make the transition easier.
Another addition is support for RGB areas of keyboards. Within Windows, for example, there are numerous applications that allow you to set all kinds of colors of keyboards with luminous functions. From now on, this option will be available for Chromebooks from HP, Acer and ASUS, among others.
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