Ryan Haines / Android Authority
As an elder member of Gen-Z, every screen in my life has its purpose. My small screen (my phone) is there for personal communication, ordering food, and mindlessly scrolling memes on the internet. My big screen (my TV) takes on the role of in-home entertainment, whether it’s a giant Spotify hub, a way to keep up with the Club World Cup, or endlessly streaming reruns of Letterkenny.
Left in the mushy middle between the two, however, is room for a medium screen, like a laptop or a tablet. These medium screens have always been the hard work, big purchase screens — the ones I turn to when the matter feels too serious for a phone. And now, Google seems to agree. It’s trying to make more tasks feel like they were meant to be done on Chromebooks, and here’s how that’s working out so far.
New expectations, new features
Ryan Haines / Android Authority
I’ve been a fan of Chromebooks — especially Chromebook Plus models — for a while now, and I’ve noticed where the classic pitfalls lie. To many, Chromebooks still feel like the lightweight, go-to options for students or those people who want to browse YouTube and check their emails. Unfortunately, that means ignoring some of the cooler AI-powered features Google has added over the last two years.
Now, though, I have to think the new stuff is inescapable. Every time Google rolls out a major Chrome OS update, it adds a handful of new AI-powered features, many of which feel like scaled-up versions of things I love about the Google Pixel series. Today, some of those additions include Select to Search and Text Capture, which work like screenshots combined with the ever-present Circle to Search on Android. You’re a little more limited in that you have to drag and drop a square over what you want to search for, but it feels like a pretty reasonable approach when not every Chromebook Plus has a touchscreen.
Sure, there are still features for students here, but the new Chrome OS update makes using AI more seamless than ever.
Google is also bringing some new functionality to the Quick Insert menu that it added to Chromebook Plus devices a few months back. You could already use it to insert GIFs, links, and more quick items without jumping between too many tabs, but now Google has also added the ability to generate and insert images, a la the Pixel Studio, one of my favorite exclusive Android apps. I like that it feels like a faster, more efficient way to plan things out with friends, since a custom image is way more attention-grabbing than a simple mass text — ask me how I know.
Of course, there are still a few new Chromebook Plus wrinkles that feel tailor-made for students, or at least those who love learning. This time, the main addition is a new segment of Help Me Read dubbed Simplify. It works pretty much how it sounds, allowing you to highlight a large section of text and have Gemini boil it down into more digestible bites for you, not quite the same as the Summarize feature, as it doesn’t swap paragraphs for bullet points so much as make the paragraphs easier to understand.
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