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    Virtual desks for Chromebooks looks nearly complete but might move to Chrome OS 77

    Kevin TofelBy 4 Comments2 Mins Read

    I’ve been following the progress on a new Chrome OS feature that will add up to four virtual desks, or workspaces, to Chromebooks since November. And the latest video demonstration shows that the feature is nearly complete: You can now drag an app from one workspace to another while in overview mode.

    Take a look:

    While there are still occasional bug reports filed for this feature, it’s definitely in the home stretch. And once it becomes available, it will be far more efficient and quicker to move your focus between groups of browser tabs and apps. Keep in mind that virtual desks are still a work in progress, so the final implementation could vary from the above video.

    Unfortunately, I don’t know if virtual desks will appear in Chrome OS 76 at this point. I’m running the Canary Channel of that version on a secondary device and neither the code nor the flag to enable the feature, has appeared yet.

    Given that the feature freeze date for Chrome OS 76 was actually last Friday, I’m now thinking this functionality will be tied to Chrome OS 77, which won’t hit the Stable Channel until September 17.

    There’s still a slim chance it arrives in Chrome OS 76, expected to land on August 6 for the Stable Channel, so I’ll keep an eye out for it on my Canary Channel device.

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    After spending 15 years in IT at Fortune 100 companies, Kevin turned a hobby into a career and began covering mobile technology in 2003. He writes daily on the industry and has co-hosted the weekly MobileTechRoundup podcast since 2006. His writing has appeared in print (The New York Times, PC Magazine and PC World) and he has been featured on NBC News in Philadelphia.

    4 Comments

    1. CajunMoses on

      I believe that I’ve changed my position on virtual desks. At first I thought of this as consuming resources that could be deployed more productively on more worthwhile capabilities and fixes. However, even though I probably won’t be a big user of virtual desks, I view the whole development and implementation effort as a formidable “stress test” of the user interface that will hopefully/probably result in collateral improvements to the overall stability of the UI, especially where Play Store has been enabled. And that really is Job #1, in my opinion.

    2. iamakii on

      Still no overview button on shelf for desktop mode. Windows 10 has a taskview button the taskbar for mouse users. If Google wants this feature for productivity, having only a keyboard combination and touchpad gesture will leave out primary mouse users.

    3. iamakii on

      Still no overview button on shelf for desktop mode. Windows 10 has a taskview button on the taskbar for mouse users. If Google wants this feature for productivity, having only a keyboard combination and touchpad gesture will leave out primary mouse users.