Sep 28, 2010 13:11 GMT  ·  By

Google's first desktop operating system is very close to launch. Chrome OS is maybe a couple of months away now so its main components are falling into place by this time.

One of the most interesting features, the possibility to connect to remote applications via the browser, chromoting as it is dubbed internally, has now landed in Chromium and the Google Chrome Canary builds.

If you like to stay updated with the latest developments for Chrome and are using either Chromium, the open-source version on which Chrome is based, or the Chrome Canary build which is generally more unstable but also ahead of the dev channel builds, you'll be able to access the new feature by visiting about:labs.

The labs section was introduced recently to Google Chrome as a way of testing experimental features that shouldn't be turned on by default for the majority of users.

After you enable Remoting and restart the browser you'll see a new entry in the Wrench menu called "Set Up Remoting." Clicking on the entry will open a pop-up window asking for your Google account credentials, similar to the way the sync feature works.

However, for now, Remoting doesn't do anything beyond that, even if you fill in your account data nothing will happen. This should be expected for an experimental feature especially one that Google hasn't talked about publicly too much.

The goal of the Remoting feature, from what Google has said so far, is to enable Chrome and Chrome OS users to connect to "legacy" apps, which is what Google calls desktop applications, and run them inside the browser.

In a sense it's similar to remote desktop applications present in most modern operating systems, though the Chrome feature may be geared towards individual apps rather than the whole desktop.

Since it's now being included in Chromium and the latest Chrome builds, the team is probably close to completion and we should get an announcement or at least a fully functioning feature in the short term future.
Google Chrome for Windows is available for download here. Google Chrome for Linux is available for download here. Google Chrome for Mac is available for download here.

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Remoting in Google Chrome Labs
The Remoting feature in Google Chrome
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