The Chromium team has released an update to the stable channel of Chrome OS for most devices that brings several security improvements and other enhancements. The big news in this release is the support of Material Design in the Chrome browser built into the OS. The update you are looking for is build 50.0.2661.91 (Platform version: 7879.66.0) or 50.0.2661.94 (Platform version: 7978.69.0). depending on your device. Also, this release is not available for the Pinky 11.6″ Chromebooks and Asus Chromebit. No word on when or if those devices will receive the update. If you have a compatible device, the update is already being pushed out by Google now and you can get it by going to Settings>About Chrome OS and check for an update. The update will require a reboot of your Chrome OS device.
There are two major feature changes in this release of the OS along with the usual smattering of bug fixes and security improvements. First, Bluetooth naming is much more consistent and clearer
Material Design in Chrome
in this release. In previous releases you would sometime only get the MAC address of the device in Bluetooth listings… or sometimes you would get the name of the device. It wasn’t very consistent. The release seems to resolve that issue – at least it has on my HP Chromebook 11 G4 this morning. Now I see all of the names of the devices.
Then, of course, there is the Material Design elements of the Chrome browser built into the OS. This is something that you could manually enable on the Chrome browser on the desktop but now you can get this same look in the OS. It isn’t a huge difference but it does look nice in my opinion.
What do you think of the new Material Design in Chrome? Leave a comment and give me your thoughts.
