Touchscreen Chromebooks are about to get a good deal more flexible when it comes to multitasking with apps in tablet mode, thanks to the introduction of a split-screen view that will allow users to snap two apps side-by-side.
Note that this feature hasn’t been officially announced yet, but it has been talked about previously, and it has now been spotted in Chrome OS dev channel version 64 by tipster Francois Beaufort.
This major boon for touchscreen Chromebooks goes under the name of ‘Split View in Tablet Mode’ and once you activate it, the feature shows all of your active windows, and you can snap whichever apps you wish into highlighted areas to view them side-by-side.
Android aggro
The caveat here is that if you’re using Android apps on your Chromebook, some of these don’t support ‘snapping’, and therefore won’t function with the split view mode – with Android games being particularly problematic, it seems. Although some games don’t lend themselves very well to multitasking anyway…
Nonetheless, this is clearly a very useful extra ability which is inbound for Chrome OS, so fingers crossed its transition from testing is a smooth one. As Digital Trends observes, the feature is likely to go live in Chromebooks early next year.
Another notable recent development in the world of Chrome OS-powered laptops is the news that you could soon be sending texts from your Chromebook – another string to the flexibility bow.
- One Chromebook makes the cut for our best laptops list
