Wouldn’t it be awesome to be able to lock/unlock your laptop using just your phone? It would certainly save you time from having to always enter your password and to manually logout of your computer everytime you step away. Now some of you guys might recall that last year, Google was working on such a feature for their Chromebook laptops.
The feature was announced at Google I/O last year and it was only in December that the feature began making its way into beta status where it was tested by developers. The good news is that it now looks like the feature is available for everyone. The Smart Lock feature has been rolled out and it basically requires the user to have a Chromebook running Chrome OS version 40+.
It will also require the user to own an Android device that runs on Android 5.0 Lollipop which at the moment is still somewhat limited to Nexus handsets and some higher-end flagship smartphones, so if your smartphone is old and has yet to be be updated, we guess you’d be out of luck for now.
Smart Lock works by pairing your phone to the Chromebook via Bluetooth. When it detects that you’re out of range, it will lock your computer, but when it detects that you are nearby, it will unlock it. The range is 100 feet which is admittedly rather far away for your computer to lock and unlock itself, but if you want to learn more on how to use the feature, head on over to Google’s support page for the details.
Filed in . Read more about Chrome Os, Chromebook and Google.