Available first in Chrome OS’s Canary channel.
While Chrome OS may have started out as Google’s own desktop operating system, it’s rapidly been doubling as the company’s new focus for tablets, too. In the latest move towards this, Chrome OS’s Canary channel now lets you run Android apps in split-screen while using tablet mode.
This was first discovered by the team at ChromeUnboxed, and you can watch their video below to see this feature in action. After opening up multiple Android apps while in tablet mode, you can press the multitask button to see everything that’s open in the background. However, holding down on an Android app now shows highlighted areas on the left and right of your screen where you can place the apps so you can run both of them simultaneously.
Once you have two apps running side-by-side, you can drag the black bar that separates them to make one window larger while automatically scaling down the other one. It’s a very similar process to running two Chrome sites/apps at the same time, and it allows for Android apps to be even more functional than they already are.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ymm9lT8mbPI?modestbranding=0&html5=1&rel=0&autoplay=0&wmode=opaque&loop=0&controls=1&autohide=0&showinfo=0&theme=dark&color=red&enablejsapi=1]
As noted above, this is something that’s currently reserved for the Canary channel of Chrome OS. Canary is Chrome OS’s most experimental/unstable channel, and it’s not something most people should use on their daily Chromebooks. Even so, we should see this expand to the Stable channel for all users in either Chrome OS 65 or 66.
If you’re running Canary on your Chromebook, have you messed with this yet?
This is what the first Chrome OS tablet looks like
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[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v8A9REps8Jc?modestbranding=0&html5=1&rel=0&autoplay=0&wmode=opaque&loop=0&controls=1&autohide=0&showinfo=0&theme=dark&color=red&enablejsapi=1]
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