Chrome OS Launcher May Let Users Search Android App Shortcuts

Google may not have plans to fuse Android and Chrome OS but the former’s influence on the latter has been increasing gradually. It has long been possible to run Android apps on Chrome OS and it even supports the entire Google Play Store now. Google has also started testing Android P on Chrome OS even though it didn’t release Android Oreo for Chromebooks. Some new code has now been discovered which suggests that the Chrome OS launcher may allow users to search for Android app shortcuts.

A recent commit on the Chromium Gerrit reveals that the Chrome OS launcher will be able to search for app shortcuts within the launcher. Google introduced app shortcuts for Android with Android 7.1 Google.

App developers can use the shortcuts to easily take users to a specific menu or feature within the app without additional steps. So users can just press and hold down on the app icon and then use the relevant app shortcut.

Google did confirm at I/O 2018 earlier this month that Chrome OS will support app shortcuts with Android P. This means that Chrome OS will actually let users search for shortcuts in the launcher even before Android itself so users can simply type “new tab,” for example, in the launcher and then select that particular shortcut to quickly open Chrome with a new tab.

This new feature will likely appear in a Chrome OS canary build in the next few weeks.

Adnan Farooqui
Categories: Computers
Tags: android p, chrome os, Google