Chrome OS

Chrome OS is a fairly minimalistic operating system, and is mainly designed for people who want their computers to ‘just work’. To that end, it is also extremely limited in terms of customization and tweaking. However, if you do want to tweak your Chromebook’s settings, install Ubuntu on it, or …

Google Docs has now become one of the most popular text editors for students and professionals alike. Being a Chromebook user myself, Google Docs is my go-to word processor. This means that I spend long hours in front of Google Docs, as does anybody who uses it as their primary …

“But will I be able to download torrents?” is one of the top concerns of people considering the shift from traditional operating systems to Chrome OS. For a lot of people, torrenting is a daily activity, whether it be the newest episode of your favorite TV show or a movie …

Google Chrome has it’s own PDF viewer, which is lightweight and handles large files smoothly, as would be expected from a Google product. While it lacks crucial features like annotations and highlighting, Chrome PDF viewer is still the quickest way to access PDFs on Chrome. However, the default PDF viewer …

If you have lived with a Chromebook for a while, you know that playing video files of different formats with subtitles is not a straightforward task. As ridiculous as it sounds, the native video player on Chrome OS does not support adding subtitle files at all. Also, it only supports …

The primary selling point for Chromebooks till now has been that they are affordable. Chrome OS is a very light operating system, and can run smoothly on the most low-end machines. Chromebooks are cheap because they run on low-end hardware. The RAM on these machines ranges from 2GB on the …

With the recent surge in ransomware attacks, the security of popular operating systems has increasingly become a pressing concern. Chromebooks, generally speaking, are much more secure than other machines running on Windows or even Mac OS. They are relatively less in number, and hence do not form a primary target …

Chrome OS has been around for quite a few years now, and it is constantly getting tweaked in ways that we may or may not like. As Chromebooks are rising in sales, Google wants to make sure that it is not leaving any stone unturned in the operating system’s functionality …

When you turn on your Chromebook, it automatically connects to a single wireless network, among several active Wi-Fi networks that you’ve previously connected to, based on a priority order.  But one question still lingers: How can one change the order of preferred Wi-Fi networks on a Chromebook. By default, your …

For a significantly large number of people, Youtube has become the primary music source. With free music available legally in the form of Youtube videos, it is simply convenient to leave a Youtube playlist running in a background tab. Don’t you wish, though, that all the music on Youtube could …

With Chrome OS, Google is looking to dethrone Windows and MacOS from the PC market. Chrome OS is very new to the market, whereas Microsoft and Apple have been developing their operating systems for a few years now. Google is not very far behind though, and is rapidly rolling out …

Emojis are now a vital part of internet language, and there is still no easy way to make emojis on computers. While most phone keyboards have now started integrating emojis, physical keyboards on laptops and desktops are yet to figure out quick ways to input emoji. Moving forward in this …

As Chromebooks become mainstream computing devices, they need to be compatible with popular file formats and compression softwares. Files received over email or downloaded from the internet can often come in the .zip or .rar format. This means that the required files have been ‘zipped’ and need to be ‘extracted’. …

The internet these days is filled with video advertisements. If you have multiple tabs open, it can be difficult to know which tab is making all the noise. Google is working on a neat trick through which we can know which tab is playing audio, and then mute that specific …

The shelf on the bottom of your Chromebook’s display is not just to launch Chrome or the Files app. Google has packed some neat tricks in the shelf, which can be utilized to make multitasking easier on Chromebooks. Here are the multiple ways in which you can use the shelf …

Chromebooks have always been most popular among students who need cheap, portable laptops with good battery life. However, when it comes to research and annotation tools, Chrome OS is far behind all other mainstream operating systems. Most research applications (like Mendeley or Zotero) are available for Windows/Mac OS/Linux, but not …

Chromebook keyboards are heavily customized for the Chrome browser experience. Google also didn’t miss out on heavily loading Chrome OS with keyboard shortcuts for a whole range of functions. Once you get used to these shortcuts, work will get done a lot faster and you will wonder how you ever …

Chromebooks are cheap and portable, and hence are targeted towards students who need to regularly work with different file formats. This can be quite a hassle considering that Chrome OS does not have downloadable software available for managing PDFs, unlike Windows or Mac OS. Hence, we must rely on Chrome …

A lot of the work that we do revolves mainly around two gadgets, a smartphone and a laptop. Hence, it is very important that there be an easy way of transferring files between the Chromebook and smartphone. Here is a detailed guide for transferring files between Chromebooks and Android/iOS smartphones. …

A factory reset, or Powerwash in Chromebook lingo, means that your computer will wipe all the local storage and user accounts. Your computer will return to the state it was in when you first opened it. There are a number of reasons to Powerwash your Chromebook. A Powerwash is often …

With people spending large parts of their day in front of their laptops, desktop backgrounds serve the important purpose of creating a productive atmosphere. Having a refreshing picture to greet you every time you turn on your laptop can really set you off in the right direction. Today, we are …

Unlike Windows computers, Chromebooks do not have a dedicated Print Screen key. The process of taking screenshots, however, is sophisticated and simple. In Chrome OS, you have the option of selecting a part of the screen for the screenshot. Chrome OS also automatically saves the screenshot as a png image …

Chromebooks have a reputation for quality touchpads. Google ensures that each Chromebook has a good enough touchpad because Chrome OS is heavily loaded with touchpad functionality. Let us take a look at the things you can do with your Chromebook touchpad. Setup your touchpad Chrome OS provides the option of …

With the Chromebook lineup, Google is tightly integrating its apps and services into the hardware and software. In that spirit, all Chromebooks come with an additional search button, that when pressed opens up an app launcher with a Google search box. The search box in the app launcher is often …

If you own a Chromebook, you probably have all your documents and media on the cloud. With Chrome OS, Google wanted us to get used to living off the cloud. The Downloads folder in the Files app is the only way to access local storage on Chrome OS. It is …