Just two days after the final beta build of Chrome 66 was released to the Chrome OS Beta Channel, that final build has now made its way to the Chrome OS Stable Channel as the official build. The build is the same as the final beta, 66.0.3359.137 (Platform version: 10452.74.0) and it is available for most machines. As is often the case with the first build in the Stable Channel, this build is not available for devices that are running Android apps. There will be a second build, likely next week, which will be available for those Chromebooks.
My Pixelbook remains at Chrome 65 this morning as an example.
While there are a few new features in this new build, the focus is on improvements of existing features. There is also a focus on security, as you would expect, with patches for the Meltdown and Spectre vulnerabilities in this build too.
Here is a complete rundown of all of the new features or updates found in this new Chrome OS Stable Channel build:
- Adding new keyboard shortcut to move windows from display-to-display
- New Chrome OS Keyboard Shortcut Helper
- External Display Settings enhancements
- Enable Video Recording in Chrome Camera App
- Overview window animation improvements
- Extending more devices support for Magic Tether
- Picture in Picture Magnification
- Ability to zoom up to 20x with Chrome OS magnifier
- Ability to adjust full screen mag zoom level through pinch gesture
- Screen sharing support for Android apps installed via the Google Play Store
- Add Google Play into first login Opt-in window
- Google Play GDPR support
- Google Play Maximized Window support improvements
- Automatically pass user credentials from Chrome OS login to network 802.1x authentication
- Native printing support extended to Google Play applications
- Add Sync notice during initial sign-in
Now that the Stable Channel is on Chrome 66, the focus starts to turn to the next build of Chrome OS. Chrome 67 is slated to land in early June (June 5th) and it is currently in the Dev Channel (the Alpha build channel for the platform). That is likely to change next week with it being moved up into the Beta Channel while Chrome 68, which currently is in the Canary channel (pre-Alpha) moving up to the Dev Channel.
