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chrome

Google'due south Chrome Os launched almost exactly 5 years agone, and information technology's come a long way since and then. What once was simply a series of browser windows that couldn't even go on themselves open in the background has gained back up for offline services, multiple displays, and even Android apps now. Withal, there are notwithstanding some basic things Google needs to shore upward, like the lack of storage management. That'southward starting to modify in the latest dev release.

Chrome OS (like Chrome) has 3 channels — stable, beta, and dev. The dev channel is the first stop for new features that eventually filter down to beta and stable. It's by definition an unstable release that has more bugs than the other channels. The latest dev release is v53, and it is here that Google has included a hush-hush storage director interface. Chrome OS also has a basic file manager, merely information technology shows startlingly little information virtually your remaining storage. The other current alternative is to download a third-party system info app like Cog.

Co-ordinate to Googler François Beaufort (who likewise developed the aforementioned Cog tool), the experimental storage manager is disabled by default. To enable it, you'll take to venture into the Chrome flags to chrome://flags/#enable-storage-manager. Enable that flag and restart the device to see the changes. The storage director pops up as a new push button in the settings under "Device." It shows you lot the total capacity, infinite used only downloads and offline files, and remaining available. The "downloads" and "offline files" labels are links to the relevant settings likewise. It is still missing back up for external storage, though.

storage

Chrome Bone is essentially a organization-level Linux kernel that runs Chrome with a custom window management environs. It'southward not literally only Chrome, but many of the platforms features are based on Chrome web apps. Until recently, the vast majority of the tools available on Chrome Os were web-based. You lot could cache data offline via services like Drive (and Dropbox with some extra legwork), but your local storage on a Chromebook was never actually eaten up. That may very well change with the improver of Android apps.

Android is designed to run apps locally and store data buried on a device. This has the potential to make Chrome OS much more than powerful, but it requires new ways to manage everything. Android apps via the Play Shop are only supported in the dev aqueduct on the Chromebook Flip right at present, but it will come up to almost Chrome OS devices in the next couple months.