If you’ve updated to Chrome OS 91, there are a few hidden features you can turn on, including a new trash can folder and a more convenient interface for progressive web apps. There’s also a way to manually enable Chrome OS’s Live Captions for users who don’t have it yet.
These features are hidden on purpose—they’re still in the experimental phase, and not ready for full release. Future Chrome OS updates will probably add them as default capabilities, but if you want to try them early you can. You’ll have to go out of your way to enable each feature, and they may not work properly, but we’ll show you how.
Let’s start with the hidden feature most Chromebook users will want: A dedicated trash folder that acts just like the deleted-files receptacle on Windows and Mac. As many Chromebook users are painfully aware, Chrome OS doesn’t let you restore removed files—but you can change that by enabling the trash folder.
With Chrome OS’s trash turned on, deleted files are sent to the folder, where they remain until you restore them or delete them forever. The trash folder is accessible from the file manager window.
The Chrome OS trash folder is enabled via Chrome’s experimental flags menu:
In a new Chrome tab, go to: chrome://flags/#files-trash
Set the flag to “Enabled.”
Restart Chrome, then reboot your Chromebook.
Progressive web apps (PWA) are web-based apps that look and run like locally installed software, but take up less space on your hard drive. Most PWAs run in a single window, but will open links externally in a browser tab, making some PWAs less effective than loading the page in a browser (looking at you, YouTube).
Thankfully, Google will soon implement tabbed PWA navigation on Chrome OS so you can open multiple links or documents in a single PWA window and easily swap between them, but you can get the feature early if you turn on this experimental feature in the Chrome flags menu.
Open a new Chrome tab then go to: chrome://flags/#enable-desktop-pwas-tab-strip
Select “Enabled” from the drop-down menu.
Next go to: chrome://flags/#enable-desktop-pwas-tab-strip-link-capturing
Set this flag to “Enabled” as well.
Restart Chrome when prompted to save the changes.
Reboot your Chromebook.
The next time you install a PWA, a dialog box will ask if you want to run the PWA with tabs.
To open PWAs you’ve already installed with a tabbed window, right-click the app’s icon on the desktop and select New window > New tabbed window.
Finally, there’s an option to turn on Live Captions for some users. For those who don’t know, Live Caption on Chromebook is the same AI-powered, live transcription feature that turns any audio to on-screen subtitles on Android devices. The feature works even with volume off or when you’re offline. Live Captions were expected to roll out for everyone with the release of Chrome OS 91, but some devices still don’t have it yet.
Don’t worry, though—you might be able to toggle it on yourself.
In a Chrome browser window, open: chrome://flags/#enable-accessibility-live-caption
Set the flag to “Enabled.”
Restart Chrome to apply the changes.
Reboot your Chromebook.
Check our Live Caption Guide on how to enable (and disable) the feature on your Chromebook after rebooting.
There is a chance Live Captions won’t work even after turning on the flag, as some users are seeing an error that their device can’t download the required speech files. There is a workaround for this, but it should only be temporary since it impacts transcription accuracy.
In Chrome once again, go to chrome://flags/#enable-accessibility-live-caption-soda.
Select “Disabled” from the box.
Restart Chrome, then reboot your Chromebook.
After the reboot, Live Captions should work now—but make sure you re-enable the #enable-accessibility-live-caption-soda flag in the future to make sure you have the latest speech recognition files downloaded.
[Android Police]
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