For some, Chrome OS is not just the operating system of their choice, it is the only operating system. For others, like me, using Windows or macOS is an inevitable part of our work. Although I love my Chromebook, I can’t use it to develop games on a large scale, mainly because it is unrealistic or unreasonable to compile Unreal Engine on a Linux kernel for compatibility reasons. Not to mention the obvious limitations of most Chromebook hardware when compared to my custom Windows desktop development environment.
For still others, Windows or macOS remains a requirement for their workplaces, as some companies are simply not yet on board Chromebooks. I have seen companies simply not investing time and energy in learning whether or not it would be a viable alternative for them. Many companies, however, use legacy Windows software in the form of executable files that simply shouldn’t run on Chrome OS. Still others prefer the full suite of Microsoft Office or Adobe Creative Cloud over alternatives or scaled-down versions of these apps that exist on the Google Play Store. I cannot blame them.
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Today, I want to review something I discovered when running my Windows and Edge experiment last week, when I wrote Edge, Chrome and the user between the article. While there is always the ability to use Chrome Remote Desktop to remotely access a Windows machine and use it temporarily, we’ll cover how to make the most of direct use of Windows 10 as a Chromebook user because I believe it will provide a better experience.
Install and access your Chromebook web apps
Every Chromebook user knows that their apps and web apps are at the core of their device’s experience. Switching to Windows – even for a short period of time – can be quite shocking. While Android apps are not available on Windows (in addition to something like Bluestacks, which is outdated and inefficient), your web apps can be used to provide a more consistent experience across the device’s operating systems. Thanks to the Chrome browser that synchronizes them for you, it doesn’t have to look like you’re back in the stone age and you’re not forced to type website URLs into Chrome’s omnibox to browse the world wide web.
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Instead, just open the Chrome browser on Windows 10, open a new tab, and in the bookmarks bar at the far left of the window, you’ll see a colored square made up of nine other smaller squares that say ‘apps’. If you look closely, you’ll see that the colors that make it up form a Chrome browser logo, but that’s just a fun Easter egg. If you don’t see it, you can also just type ‘chrome: // apps’ and press Enter. Clicking ‘Apps’ reveals all the web apps on your Chromebook!
Although it is totally impractical to access them here, since they are not exactly searchable, they have low resolution icons in many cases and are huge and bulky (Google, please modernize this!), Let’s ‘install’ those that we want to use on our Windows 10 machine. Right click on each icon of your interest and click on ‘Install on this device’. Yes, unfortunately, this needs to be done one at a time (modernize that too!), But once you’re done, you’ll have access to everything directly via the Windows Start button and search. Although Microsoft research is not very good in my opinion, it is better than nothing.
Clicking Start> All apps> Chrome apps will reveal all of your web applications as well. It’s not a Chromebook launcher and it’s ugly, but it gets the job done. I should also mention here briefly that if you add new web apps to your Chromebook, they won’t automatically sync to your Windows machine – you’ll also have to ‘install’ them manually. Remember that you can also right-click and pin them to the taskbar or the Start menu for quick access.
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Use Google Drive File Stream
Using Google Drive on a Windows machine used to be equivalent to downloading a file, changing it and resending it via the web browser. Then Google switched to Drive Backup & Sync, which would function as a local Dropbox folder for all of your Google files. However, the old synchronization tool was very bad, lost the synchronization of many files and did not work instantly. Google now offers Drive File Stream for Workspace, which instantly ‘streams’ your files for you instead of requiring you to download them. This forces your Windows 10 device to operate in much the same way as the Chromebook Files app, and here’s a little secret – it’s also available to regular users! Once you’ve done this setup, you’ll feel right at home with your files while you’re away from your Chromebook. An icon for File Stream appears in the system tray and you can see the progress of synchronizing your files with a single click.
Forces Windows to search Google instead of Bing
Maybe I’m just biased, but as I said in my Edge experiment article, Bing is just, well, how do I put that? It just isn’t good. During the time I used it, it produced less accurate and relevant search results almost every time compared to Google Search. Regardless of how many ‘Scroogled’ ads you saw, Bing just didn’t live up to my expectations. However, having Google search a touch away, as with a Chromebook, is important for those who use Chrome OS regularly. Having to go to a new Chrome tab and start searching for something adds a few extra steps, so installing the Chrometana Pro extension from the Web Store will allow you to turn your Windows Search into a Google search bar!
Be aware that Chrometana is not Chrometana Pro, so be sure to install the latter. After doing this, follow the instructions that open in a new guide to download, install and configure the Edge Deflector. If all else fails, you can also completely uninstall Edge from your machine and, although many people warn me against it or saying it wasn’t possible, it was, I did it and I don’t regret it.
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Use Chrome notifications and the action center
Since I started using Windows 10, I have been known to hate Action Center. For Chrome OS users, this Windows feature most closely resembles the Chromebook’s quick settings and notification area. If you enter the Chrome website settings (chrome: // settings / content / all), you can enable desktop notifications for each site that you want to send information to when there’s something new. This helps to fill the information delivery gap for your newly ‘installed’ Chrome web apps.
I also recommend familiarizing yourself with the quick settings options in the Action Center – there’s a Focus Mode, which most closely resembles the Do Not Disturb option on your Chromebook. There is also a night light feature and even a screen capture tool called Screen Snip. Understanding how to use them will help you feel a little less when you switch to Windows to work. You can also right-click on any block at the bottom of the action center and click on ‘Edit’ to move them so that the most useful ones appear at the top when you collapse that area. See what the Chrome web app notifications, quick settings and Windows ‘search’ look like after doing all of the above:
Send guides to yourself on all devices
Working with multiple operating systems, you will sometimes find that you want a specific website to be used on the opposite device. Something you want to read later or just something you’d like to see later. The Chrome omnibox has a new ‘Send to myself’ feature, which allows you to ping the tabs between devices. The image below on the left is my Windows 10 PC sending a guide to my Chromebook, and the image below on the right is my Chromebook sending a guide to my phone or PC – very useful! The four-square icon to the right of the ‘Send me to guide’ icon is the QR code Dino, which is also very useful. Finally, you can use the star icon on the far right to add something to your favorites or to your reading list – all synced via the Chrome cross sync device.
Add missing features with Windows Store apps
I know, I know, I’ve already criticized the Windows Store a lot because it doesn’t have as many useful apps as the Google Play Store, and while that’s true, there are some useful utilities you can get from it that can transform your Windows 10 experience and give you a little more of the Chromebook feel while you’re forced to use it. Here are just a few of them that I recommend:
- Files – a beautiful file application that doesn’t look terribly out of date like the standard file explorer (not perfect, but good for most users)
- Twinkle Tray: Brightness Slider – I’m baffled by the fact that Windows 10 for the desktop doesn’t have a built-in native brightness control. That fixes it!
- Modern Flyouts (Preview) – Adds a modern-looking software volume slider and a miniature music control center to the system tray.
- TaskbarX – Center the Windows 10 taskbar icons! To do. This. Now. You can also make the taskbar transparent among a number of other settings.
Choose which icons appear on the taskbar
Last but not least, you can choose which icons appear on the Windows 10 taskbar in the system tray area by right-clicking on the taskbar and choosing ‘Taskbar settings’ As soon as the settings opens, scroll down and look for ‘Choose which icons appear on the taskbar’ (it’s a simple text link, not a button). From there, you can turn off things like OneDrive (unless you use it), Skype, Network (access via Action Center) and more. Then, turn on things like Google Drive, Twinkle Tray and Volume so that the essential features you’re used to using on your Chromebook are in the front and center.
In summary, none of the methods mentioned above will provide an experience that makes you as productive as it would be on your Chromebook. You could almost say that this guide allows you to ‘turn Windows 10 into a Chromebook’, so to speak, but I would say it is a far cry from what Google created with Chrome OS. It also takes a lot of work to try to emulate Google’s hard work and dedication to its platform. While File Stream is fantastic and certainly a breakthrough for Drive Backup & Sync, accessing your Chrome web apps through the ‘All Apps’ section of Windows 10 is just horrible, and the Windows Search functionality is just ridiculous. TaskbarX and EdgeDeflector are great additions, but they will only prove that Microsoft worked hard to keep Windows from looking modern, in my humble opinion.
Windows 10 can be a fantastic tool for creativity and design, but most of you who are reading this are probably not going to use it for much more than the mandatory piece of software for your daily work. I created this guide as a companion for my Edge, Chrome and the user between the article, since I decided to try Windows and Edge last week. I thought it would be useful for those of you who don’t want to feel completely out of their environment when moving between devices. Although I call this a comprehensive guide, I’m sure there are many other things I could think of to complete the experience, so if there’s something you’d like to know about transforming Windows to be more comfortable when visiting from Chrome OS, please let me know in the comments!
