It would let users power off the Chromebook or sign out

Mar 12, 2018 16:42 GMT  ·  By

Chromium evangelist at Google François Beaufort reports today the availability of a brand-new, Android-like power menu on Google's Chrome OS operating system for Chromebooks with a touch screen.

If you own a Chromebook with a touch screen, you'll be happy to learn that Google's engineers are working on an all-new power menu similar to the one of the Android mobile operating system, allowing you to either sign out of Chrome OS or power off the device after long pressing the physical power button.

As far the functionality goes, the all-new power menu allows Chromebook users to either sign out of the Linux-powered Chrome OS operating system or power off the device. The power menu is currently available for public testing via the Chrome Canary experimental channel.

"After a long-press on the physical power button on Chromebooks with touch screen, a brand new menu à la Android is now displayed to power off the device or sign out," said François Beaufort on Google+. "It is available for testing/playing without any flag to toggle in Canary channel."

A bunch of new features are coming soon to a Chromebook near you

Last week alone we reported on several new features coming to a Chromebook near you, including better support for external displays and a brand-new floating virtual keyboard, an all-new wallpaper picker and support for exporting passwords to a text (.csv) file, as well as a docked magnifier accessibility tool.

Google also plans to support containerized Linux apps on Chromebooks by allowing Linux VMs (virtual machines) to run on Chrome OS. It would take a while until all these goodies are available for all users on the stable channel, but you can try them out right now if you switch to a more experimental channel.