Let's face it: the account manager on Chromebooks has needed an overhaul for quite some time. As it is, Chrome OS blurs the line between secondary personal accounts and local users, making it frustrating for the owner to add or manage people on their devices. With more users adding secondary accounts to their Chromebook in light of the global pandemic, many will have lamented the confusing setup process. The developers at Google finally realized that they could make account management a lot less complicated, so they decided to do something about it.

In the Chrome OS Dev channel, we've noticed that Google is reworking the account manager to make it much easier to set up new users. If you're interested in checking out the new flow, you can copy and paste chrome://flags/#account-management-flows-v2 into the URL bar and enable it from the drop-down menu. After you restart your Chromebook, you'll notice a significant change to the "Accounts" menu in the OS settings. Here's a quick look.

The revamped account manager UI.

The redesigned menu takes on a much cleaner look. Unlike before, the page clearly explains how to set up multiple accounts on Chrome OS. Additionally, it clarifies that your apps and OS settings will only sync with your primary Google account — the original one you signed in with and used to set up your login. The manager now explicitly differentiates your primary account, which is much better than simply displaying a small label. The new UI also moves "Security and sign-in" and "Manage other people" into "Privacy and security" and renames the "People" category to "Accounts," further creating a separation in the OS settings between local users and multiple sign-in accounts.

Although a revamped account manager may not seem like a massive change, a small amount of polish like this goes a long way towards improving the overall user experience. With people spending more time online than ever, adding multiple user accounts to Chrome OS will now be less of a headache, especially for those with distinct school and work accounts. Since there's not a lot to it, I'd hope this handy improvement will arrive in the Chrome OS Stable channel soon. Time will tell.