Author: Clinton

One of the challenges of Chrome OS is when it comes to partitioned USB drives.  Let me paint the scenario for you.  Let’s say you have a 64GB USB drive that you were using as your Chrome OS Recovery drive for your Chromebook (I highly recommend you create one if you haven’t already).  Now let’s say that you pick up a small 16GB drive for a few bucks and decide you want to have that as your recovery drive instead as it is a more efficient use of the drive space.  After all, a Chrome OS recovery drive only needs about 4GB of storage.

You create your new recovery drive and put it in a safe place.  Now you plug in your old recovery drive and open it up in the Files app.  There you will see the USB drive has two partitions:  OEM and USB Drive.

Partitioned USB Drive in Chrome OS Files App

The problem is that if you reformat the USB Drive partition or the OEM partition, you will still have a partitioned drive.  In other words, just like in Windows or MacOS, reformatting doesn’t get rid of a partition.  You have to completely wipe the drive of data and partitions to get it back to one partition.

Fortunately, within Chrome OS, there is a quick and easy way to do this using the Chrome OS Recovery app itself.  In this How To, I will walk you through the quick process to take that multi-partition USB drive and reset it to one partition that is the size of the USB drive itself.

After weeks of rumors that the feature would be coming, Google Duo has finally added the ability to use the video chat app across multiple devices.  The new feature is a combination of an app update as well as a cloud-side update from Google to enable it.

First, you need to make sure you have the latest version of the app.  That was released yesterday and is build 36.1.202022753.DR36_RC15 for those keeping score at home and who like playing Google Version BINGO!  Once you have this version, you will shortly thereafter get a cloud-side push from Google.  You will know that you have received that Google update when you are prompted in Duo if you want to use your Gmail address instead of your phone number to sign into Google Duo.  That is key because that’s how multi-device support works in the app.

While the future of the company may be in question, there is no question that Essential is on top of their game when it comes to updates.  The same day that Google released the July Android Security Update, yesterday, the California company has released their update with the security patches for the Essential Phone.

The new build is OPM1.180104.267 and it is already rolling out to PH-1 owners, bringing the security patch as well as stability improvements for Android Auto.  If you have an Essential Phone, you can manually check for the update in Settings as it should be ready to roll for everyone.

Google Keep, Google’s note taking and checklist app, has a new update rolling out in the Play Store today.  Version 5.0.251.04.40 is the updated build for those keeping score at home and it brings support for grid and ruled lines for drawings.

Keep has always supported drawing but grid lines to help you keep lines straight and the like wasn’t there.  It was added a few weeks back to the online version of the note taking app and now has made it to the mobile version too.

The fourth Developer Preview and 3rd beta of Android P has been released to those in the Android Beta Program today.  The update is a few days later than expected.  According to the timeline Google published when Android P was announced, Developer Preview 4 was slated for a late June release.

The update is just under 300 MB and is already rolling out to those who have devices registered in the Beta Program.  I currently have my Google Pixel XL in the program and the OTA update has already been received and installed.  As far as new things are concerned, you won’t find much.  There are a tweaks here and there throughout the build but no major feature changes.

As expected, the July 2018 Android Security Update patches were released this morning by Google.  As a general rule, the Mountain View company releases the monthly updates on the first Monday of the first full week of each month.

This month’s update consists of two patches, one dated July 1, 2018 while the second is dated July 5, 2018.  The first patch consists of 11 patches, 3 of which are considered critical updates.  This July 1st patch is generally aimed at Android as a platform itself while the second patch is more device specific drivers and fixes.