Category: Chrome 64

If your organization has Hangouts Meet or Chrome for Meetings hardware, there is a new update rolling out to you.  The Chrome 64 update for these hardware solutions has been released, taking you up to build Stable Channel Chrome OS release but has the Huddly firmware which is updated to 1.2.10.

For those that aren’t familiar with these two solutions, they are physical hardware packaged solutions that run on Chrome OS designed for conferences and meeting rooms.  They are available to G Suite customers in the Education, Business and Enterprise versions of the platform.

A small, minor update is currently rolling out to the Chrome OS Stable Channel this morning.  The update is build 64.0.3282.190 or 64.0.3282.192 (Platform version: 10176.76.0 or 10176.77.0 or 10176.80.0).  Which build you will  get depends on your device.

The update, as you can tell by that build number, keeps the platform in Chrome 64.  The Chrome 65 build is next expected until next week on March 13th.  This rather is a midstream bug fix and security update build.  This is also the third Chrome 64 release for the platform.

A long awaited feature has finally come to Chrome OS.  In the latest stable build of the platform, Chrome 64, the ability to rename external drives connected to your Chromebook has been enabled.  Now when you are in the File app, you can press ctrl+enter to rename the drive.

The ability to rename external drives is something that I first saw in a commit way back in August of last year.  The commit indicated that this shortcut would be coming but it wasn’t clear when exactly it would land on the platform.  This was not available to me on my Pixelbook under Chrome 63 so it looks like yesterday’s build release enabled it.

Nearly three weeks after the initial Chrome 64 release in the Stable Channel, there is a new build that has been released for Chrome OS.  Build 64.0.3282.167 or 64.0.3282.169 (Platform version: 10176.72.0 or 10176.73.0) was released earlier today and it will be rolling out to the majority of devices starting today.  Users can manually check for the update by going to chrome://help on their device and checking for the update.

Generally the Chromium team has been releasing the first update of a new build to non-Android running Chromebooks while the second one in the train goes to those than can run the apps.  That appears to be the case here as reviewing the OmahaProxy shows the vast majority of devices now with either the .167 or .169 build as their stable release.

Progressive Web Apps, or PWAs, are the next big trend in browsing tech.  Designed to give an app-like experience on the web, PWAs are something that Google has been pushing hard as well as Apple and Microsoft.  All three companies, as well as Firefox are all planning to roll out support for the technology this year but Google appears to have the jump.

With Chrome 64, you have the ability to change flags within the browser to enable Progress Web Apps.  While technically not support – generally most flag settings are officially supported – it does work and you can give it a try to see what all the hubbub is about before it gets here in full swing later this year.  In this How To, I’ll show you which flags to enable to try out a PWA experience.

Starting today, the Chrome browser for Windows, MacOS and Linux will start blocking intrusive adverts on sites to give a better user experience.  Google had announced that these types of ads would be blocked back in December starting today after announcing their agreement with the Coalition for Better Ads last summer.

If you don’t remember, for desktops, ads that do the following risk being blocked:

• pop-up ads
• auto-play video ads with sound
• prestitial ads with countdown
• large sticky ads

For those who have the ad blocker enabled in Chrome on their desktop, you will no longer see these ads.