Google’s Chrome OS has the advantage of including support for Android and the platform’s vast collection of apps. Now, Chromebooks are finally being upgraded to Android 11 to bring some new features and better functionality, but the update is only in beta for now.
Android 11 on Chromebooks is not a major review of anything, but it does add two important new features. First, this includes support for a dark, but currently limited, theme.
In Chrome OS 89, the first update to deliver this new version of Android, a flag is added to the Android developer options menu that activates the dark theme for Android apps that are designed to respect the system configuration. When enabled, it means that Chrome OS will show apps like the Play Store and Google Home in dark mode, as shown below. However, this does not work at all and, notably, comes at a time when Chrome OS itself does not yet support dark mode. Still, it’s progress made and it’s great to see.
With the arrival of Android 11, Chrome OS is also changing the way Android applications run in general. Android applications now run on a virtual machine, as well as Linux and Parallels for Windows. This means two things. On the one hand, security has been greatly improved, as this change makes it more difficult for malicious agents to use Android applications as an access point. In addition, this has the potential to pave the way for faster Android updates on Chrome OS.
In addition, Android 11 on Chrome OS also allows for improved scaling in applications. This is again a developer flag where you can manually adjust the uniform scale factor for Android apps running on your Chromebook. Notably, as Android Police brings up, Google made an attempt to fix this in some recent versions of Chrome OS, v86 and v87, but they were dropped before a major release because they actively broke Android apps.
When changes are applied using this option, you will notice changes in font sizes and the overall layout of Android apps. This may not be necessary for all applications, but it is certainly an option that we are happy to see that Google has finally worked.
This update is being released now, but Android 11 is only appearing on a few panels. So far, this includes the hatch plate, which includes just about anything with a 10th generation Intel processor. In the images above, we were using an HP C640 Pro Chromebook, which uses a 10th generation Intel Core i7 vPro chip.
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