You can now force floating windows to stay on top
Chrome OS has long been setting out to show that it’s as much a full-blown operating system as something like Linux or Windows, and that includes robust support for multitasking. It allows you to open multiple apps at once and offers features like split-screen to easily use them simultaneously. But one oversight has involved situations that might be better suited to floating windows (rather than split apps) — like pinning a calculator while working out expenses listed in a note, or playing a video while chatting with friends on a messenger. That’s why we’re so excited to see Google adding a nifty pinning feature to Chrome OS, bringing your most mundane multitasking desire to life: keeping a window on top.
Before now, if you opened two different apps in Chrome OS, interacting with one would cause the other to be forcefully pushed to the background. Unfortunately, this would mean that you’d repeatedly need to bring it back up from the taskbar to continue accessing it. But now we’ve managed to spot a new flag at chrome:flags#cros-labs-float-window in the latest update to the bleeding-edge Chrome OS Canary channel, and it seems to solve the problem quite well.
Once enabled, you’ll see a new pin icon on an app’s title bar next to other window controls. Clicking on it allows you to pin the app, keeping it in view, even while you interact with another window behind. Alternatively, you can use press Launcher + Alt + F on your keyboard as a shortcut. While the functionality itself works as expected, it feels like the interface isn’t quite fully fleshed out yet, as there are currently no visual cues (like the pin icon graying out or taking a slanted appearance) to show that a window’s in a pinned or unpinned state. It seems likely that might be added in a future build.
This seems like a quality-of-life update more than anything, but it’s good to know that you’ll have the option to keep windows in the foreground when those niche situations that demand it come around. Linux and its Unix forbears have offered similar always-on-top support for the better part of forever, while Windows is yet to feature it natively — although plenty of third-party apps offer it themselves.
So the next time you want to pick up one of the best Chromebooks out there, know that Chrome OS will soon treat it with a bit more respect.
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