14 DAY TRIAL // Google's Chrome OS team is working on a new feature for Chromebooks to show the full-screen launcher in tablet mode.
Chromium evangelist at Google François Beaufort recently shared details about a new Chrome OS feature that's internally called "Home Launcher," which will show a full-screen launcher when using your Chromebook in tablet mode. The experimental feature is currently available for testing in the Chrome OS Dev channel.
To play with the new "Home Launcher" on your Chromebook, you'll have to switch to the Chrome OS Dev channel first, then enable open Chrome, access chrome://flags and enable the chrome://flags/#enable-home-launcher experimental flag, and restart your Chromebook.
"The Chrome OS team is experimenting with a feature to show fullscreen launcher in tablet mode only," said François Beaufort on Google+. "This is internally called "home launcher" and is available for playing in Dev channel by turning on the experimental flag chrome://flags/#enable-home-launcher and restart Chrome."
Here's how the new "Home Launcher" will work
According to the corresponding Chromium Gerrit commit, the upcoming "Home Launcher" feature in Chrome OS will act as a desktop and works by creating a window container right above the wallpaper container, placing the app drawer in it when the Chromebook device is switched to tablet mode.
Various of the properties of the app drawer, including the background blur, opacity, and scroll events will also be changed when in tablet mode, and the Home Launcher feature will make sure it won't be closed during activities like app launching, accelerators, window focus change, or when using the back button.
Finally, the "Home Launcher" feature will also change the behavior of the home button when your Chromebook is in tablet mode, allowing you to use it for minimizing all windows. The split view mode and overview mode will also be closed when "Home Launcher" is enabled. Check it out in action below, courtesy of François Beaufort.
