A new commit in the Chrome OS Gerrit points to the floating virtual keyboard being enabled by default when you enter into tablet mode on your compatible Chromebook. The feature leverages existing flags that you can find in the Stable Channel today, but this commit make the default behavior change.
Today, if you go chrome://flags/#enable-floating-virtual-keyboard you can enable the floating virtual keyboard on your Chromebook. Then, when you go into tablet mode, the keyboard can be moved from fixed to floating using the overflow menu (the three vertical dots). You’ll also find several other virtual keyboard flags to play with if you do a search for “virtual keyboard” on the flags page.
All this commit is doing is changing the behavior of the virtual keyboard to always be floating when you go into tablet mode. This should make it a far more useful experience over what the default is today. Today, when you fire up the virtual keyboard, it literally takes up a quarter your screen and is fixed at the bottom of the page.
Virtual Keyboard in Chrome OS Today
This new mode would allow you to have a smaller keyboard which should make it easier to type on and work with windows on your Chromebook.
The change of behavior outlined in this commit is already live in the Chrome OS Canary Channel (pre-alpha) which is based on Chrome 67. That means we won’t see the behavior change until that build is released until June 5th of this year.
No Responses