After nearly a week of being mostly offline for travel and other reasons, I just updated my Acer Chromebook Spin 13. I run the Dev Channel on it and see that it got bumped up to Chrome OS 101 for the first time. Lo and behold, the blazingly bright boot screen is gone! Thanks to Chrome OS 101, I now have the dark Chromebook boot screen that’s nearly a decade overdue.
Apparently, I’m also overdue to clean my Chromebook’s display. But I can assure you, I do that more than once every 10 years.
To be honest, this isn’t a massive or ground-breaking technological feature. I know that. But it gives hope to all of those burned retinas that Chromebook users have had to deal with like… forever.
Seriously, Chromebooks first hit the market in 2010 and we’re just now getting this feature? It couldn’t have been that difficult to implement. Sigh.
Aside from the high-intensity white that sears my peepers every time I boot up a Chromebook, it’s also a pain when I work late at night. In a dark room. In bed. Next to my sleeping wife. Booting my Chromebook wakes her up every single time.
And that brilliant white boot screen burns my eyeballs even more in what was a completely dark room. Seriously, I think the Chrome OS logo is burned into the back of my eyes. I’ll take this dark Chromebook boot screen any day over the current one.
By the way, I didn’t have to set any flags or make any changes in Chrome OS to get this dark Chromebook boot screen. That makes sense since Chrome OS itself isn’t even fully running until after the boot-up process. So once you get Chrome OS 101, you’ll simply have the feature.
Anyway, I’ll be looking around to see what’s what in Chrome OS 101, given that it should be on your Chromebook in roughly eight weeks. But first, I need to finish unpacking from my travels and catch up on more important news. I see that the Chrome OS 99 Stable Channel arrived while I was away and I’m always keen on seeing what features did or didn’t make the cut.
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I have an HP Chromebase acquired about 5 weeks ago.
It arrived with OS 98 stable, and I’ve bumped it to beta – now at 100.
The boot screen is a nice dark grey.
Not entirely sure, but I think it was that way on arrival.
Is this possibly a previously existing manufacturer’s mod on certain makes and models?
It’s possible that the feature I’m seeing in 101 Dev was pushed over to 100 beta. But AFAIK, I don’t think OEMs can change the boot screen.
This got me curious, so I did another check.
I also have an HP Chromebook 14.
This shows the bright white chromeOS flash screen with the Chrome logo at startup.
It then proceeds directly to the login screen, which is a dark grey.
Re-checking my Chromebase all-in-one, it skips that first screen altogether.
That is, it starts up right at the dark grey login screen.
No idea why that is, but it seem relevant to your initial post.
Hmm… could be Chromebase specific. I haven’t used one in ages, so I can’t remember if the white boot screen shows up.
I just noticed the ironic fact that the Chromebase does flash
a rather bright white screen momentarily on shutdown.
So it gets you on the way out instead.
I’m hoping they change that as well.
This is GLORIOUS news!
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I feel your pain on uexpectedly bright screens- my chromebook login screen is reasonably dark until I click to enter my password, then for some reason the background brightens considerably. Please share if you know a workaround to avoid this!