Chromium commits say the editor just wasn’t up to snuff
More than a year ago, Google started working on a tool for editing screenshots directly in their desktop browser. First featured in Chrome Canary version 98, this utility gained new functionality over months of work, and seemed as though it was destined to launch outside its feature flag as a tool available for all users. Sadly, Chromium commits made earlier this week point to the demise of the screenshot tool — at least in its current form.
Engineers on the Chromium Gerrit, where changes are submitted to Chrome’s open-source code base, made a series of commits that removed all traces of the screenshot editing tool from the browser. Evidently, the user experience for the new feature just couldn’t be streamlined enough to justify continued development. Spotted by Leopeva64, these changes are summarized by Googler Elly Fong-Jones:
We decided, after a great deal of UX feedback, that this component isn’t polished enough to ship and we don’t quite see a path to getting it there without a big rework. This change deletes the feature, the logic to install the component, and the wiring for it in the screenshot bubble.
It generally takes about 10 weeks for commits in Chromium to make their way to Chrome stable, so we still have some time to pay our respects to the ill-fated feature. To see it in action, first enable the screenshot feature at chrome://flags/#sharing-desktop-screenshots, then activate the editor at chrome://flags/#sharing-desktop-screenshots-edit and restart your desktop browser. From there, click the share icon in the Omnibox, highlight an area to screenshot, then click “Edit” on the popup to see the doomed feature.
These changes only apply to the screenshot editor — the screenshot feature itself should stick around for some time to come. This is useful if you want to quickly highlight a portion of a page without using the full screenshot utility on Windows or Mac, but you’ll still need to enable the #sharing-desktop-screenshots flag. If you were using this feature and need an alternative, Google Photos has some slick editing features you might want to try.
