Chromebook

HP’s new Chromebook Plus devices aim to fulfill the needs of today’s young people — who are looking, HP has determined, for “technology that is flexible, adaptable, and delivers powerfully immersive experiences, while keeping the planet in mind.”

So, technically this feature has been floating around for a while in developer channels and such, but it’s been officially announced today with the release of Chrome OS 116. As of now, Chrome OS enables owners of RGB Chromebooks to customize the colors of each color zone.

Google launched the feature in beta during Google I/O in May. The company says the update, ChromeOS M115, is coming out “soon.”

We’re about to see one in the wild. Asus has launched its Chromebook CM34 Flip, one of the first models that will include AMD’s new Ryzen 7020 C-Series processors (which are basically the same chips that AMD released for budget laptops last September, but nevertheless).

Chrome OS was not particularly, shall we say, present at the Google I/O event on Wednesday, but there was one neat announcement: You can now stream apps to a Chromebook from an Android phone. This is something you could already do in Windows, but it’s nice to see Chrome OS hopping on the train.

CNBC reports that Google is scaling back its spending on employee services, according to a companywide email from finance chief Ruth Porat. One particularly unfortunate detail: non-engineer employees will now be issued Chromebooks by default, rather than the “range of offerings, such as Apple MacBooks” that were available previously.

If you recently tried to use Zoom on your Chromebook and it didn’t work, don’t panic — that’s because Zoom recently replaced its older ChromeOS app with a new progressive web app. If you haven’t moved to the new app yet, here’s how to do it.

Sometimes, it’s the little things that can be the most irritating — like when you’re trying to use your Chromebook as a tablet and you rotate the screen and the picture won’t rotate with it. Here’s how to fix that.

But no more. Now, all the more popular operating systems — macOS, iOS, Windows, Android, and ChromeOS — include that ability as part of their toolkits. Here’s now you can zip and unzip files in order to save space, no matter which OS you use.

Chromebooks recently got a nifty new feature: you can record a video of your screen and easily add an audio narration and a small selfie showing you as you narrate. It’s a great way to create a presentation for your colleagues, or for a relative who just can’t figure out how to, say, attach a file to an email.
Here’s how to do that and take traditional screenshots on a Chromebook:

We’re accustomed to things getting better every year, but in the case of Acer’s generally-excellent Chromebook Spin, the opposite happened.