Picture-in-Picture windows

ChromeOS 130 Release Notes
Stable Channel

Released to stable on October 29, 2024

Control how you work, study, and play with ChromeOS. The newest version of ChromeOS includes features such as Focus, Welcome Recap, and Picture-in-Picture to help you prioritize where your attention goes.

Focus on ChromeOS
Minimize your distractions and create a more productive workspace. With Focus, you can effortlessly set and adjust your focus time, enable or disable Do-not-Disturb (DND) mode, sort through or create new Google Tasks, and immerse yourself in curated playlists that help you focus better with focus sound or YouTube Music Premium (subscription-based).

To use Focus, go to Quick Settings >Focus.

Welcome Recap
Resume your work even faster at start-up. Once you enable this feature, you will be able to preview and restore apps and tabs from your previous session. Welcome Recap also provides helpful information like weather, your next calendar event, recent tabs from other devices and relevant Google Drive
suggestions.
To turn on this feature, select Settings> System Preferences >Startup>; Welcome Recap, and select Ask every time.

Picture-in-Picture windows
Enjoy greater flexibility with Picture-in-Picture (PiP) windows. PiP Tuck lets you temporarily move PiP windows to the side of your screen, freeing up valuable screen space while keeping your video easily accessible. Additionally, you can quickly adjust the size of PiP windows with a quick double-tap, toggling between two sizes for optimal viewing.

Help me read on ChromeOS
Quickly find the information you need in any text with this AI-powered solution. Easily get to the heart of what you’re reading in the browser and in Gallery by right-clicking on an empty space to reveal the Help me read card above the existing contextual menu. The Help me read panel showcases a summary of the text and a freeform Q&A field where you can ask specific questions about the text.

Quick Insert
Quickly insert emojis, symbols, GIFs, Google Drive links, and quick calculations and unit conversions with a keyboard key (on select models) or a keyboard shortcut.

Also released in ChromeOS 130
Access Drive files, calendars, and privacy controls faster with these improvements to ChromeOS.

Enhanced access for Drive files
In addition to files you’ve starred within Tote, access all your starred Drive files directly from the shelf, which is now available to you offline. Enhanced Drive suggestions in Launcher and Tote allow you shortcut access to your most important and frequently used files.

New suggestions in Tote
Quickly access and pin the files you need the most with local and Drive file suggestions. The new Suggestions section in Tote suggests files to users, up-leveling files that will be useful for them to pin and access offline.

Multi-calendar support
We are launching Multi-calendar support to allow users to view all events from multiple calendars that they have selected within their Google Calendar.

Studio-style mic
Make your Chromebook's built-in microphone sound like a professional studio microphone by activating this feature in the video call controls. Studio-style mic includes the existing noise cancellation and de-reverberation effects, and further enhances them with advanced balancing, reconstruction of fine details, and room adaptation. Users who have enabled noise cancellation will get the Studio-style mic enhancements by default starting with this release. If a user wants to revert to the old noise cancellation-only effect, they can select the appropriate option in Settings > Device > Audio. This feature is only available on Chromebook Plus devices⁠.

AI-powered Recorder app
ChromeOS 130 introduces the new Google AI-powered Recorder app to create transcriptions that can detect and label speakers, and provide a summary of recorded content. Our app goes beyond recording, offering speech-to-text, content summarization, and title suggestions, all powered by Google AI.

Content scanning for Managed Guest Sessions
We are now enabling organizations to extend Chrome Enterprise Premium⁠’s powerful scanning and content and context-based protection to local files in Managed Guest Sessions on ChromeOS. For example, a misplaced file containing Social Security numbers is instantly blocked when a user attempts to copy it to an external drive, safeguarding this confidential information.

Additional URLs allowed in Kiosk mode
If a Kiosk app uses more than one URL origin, IT Admins can now enter the additional origins. All specified origins will get permissions automatically granted. Permissions will be rejected for any other origins not included in this list.

Appearance effects
Appearance effects have been popular among the products of cameras, virtual meetings, and short videos for a long time and launched on some Google products. In ChromeOS 130, we integrate this feature into Chromebook for video call controls. Available on Chromebook Plus devices⁠ only.

More accessible privacy controls
In this launch, we are making OS-level privacy controls more available to users of Chrome browser. This aims to make users more aware that to make the camera or microphone work, they need to enable OS-level privacy controls.

Enhanced keyboard brightness controls
Chromebook users can now easily adjust keyboard brightness and control the ambient light sensor directly from the Settings app. This new feature lets you set your keyboard brightness to the perfect level and turn the ambient light sensor on or off as needed. These updates make it simpler to use your device and help manage battery life. Meanwhile, if the Chromebook supports RGB, the Settings > Keyboard option now has a direct link to RGB color selection options. For more details, see Using gaming features on your Chromebook⁠.

Enhanced display brightness controls
Chromebook users can now easily adjust display brightness and control the ambient light sensor directly from the Settings app. This new feature lets you set your screen brightness to the perfect level and turn the ambient light sensor on or off as needed in Settings. These updates make it simpler to use your device and help manage battery life.

Improved ARC++ user experience
To improve ChromeOS and ARC++ user experience, we're moving ARC++ non-urgent background and error notifications to the system tray. This prevents these messages from unnecessarily popping up in the foreground and disrupting the user's journey. By moving these notifications to the system tray, we can ensure that users are still notified of potential issues but are not interrupted while using their Chromebook. For more information about ARC++, see this ChromeOS developer blog.

New policy to control Access Point Names
For Chromebooks with cellular capability, Access Point Name (APN) policies allow administrators to restrict usage of custom APNs. By setting the AllowAPNModification flag in general network settings to restrict, they can prevent end users from adding or using any custom APNs.