After a short delay, Chrome OS 98 is starting to roll out to the stable channel. The new release brings a handful of changes, including new emoji, expanded virtual desks shortcuts, and an overhauled language settings menu ahead of the big 100 milestone. A rollout to currently-supported Chromebooks has started — though it may take a little while for all devices to get it.
Google hasn't graced us yet with a big blog post highlighting Chrome OS 98 features, but most of the changes are already well-documented, including many that Chrome 98 itself got. That includes a new font format for sharper and more beautiful emoji, an improved PWA experience, and a new Privacy Guide — the new screenshot tool in Chrome 98 is tied to the sharesheet and may not be present in Chrome OS, but there is a new "save to" menu for screen captures to choose a drive or folder, and support for Network Based Recovery on some devices.
High-level highlights for Chrome OS-specific additions (from AP contributor Kent Duke's literal weeks of wading through thousands of source code changes) are just below:
- Emoji picker update to emoji 14.0 — that means new emoji
- Overhauled language settings
- Network Based Recovery
- New virtual desk shortcuts
- Dark mode flag for the virtual keyboard
- "Save to" settings for screen capture
- Chrome Files app SWA gets full dark theme support
- Improved scrolling performance in ARC apps when using a mouse
- Google Play Store search disabled in launcher
On top of that are literally hundreds of smaller changes, including numerous bug fixes addressing everything from drag-and-drop randomly crashing things in Linux to auto-granting USB access for smart card connectors and readers via WebUSB. This is further excluding several features that landed via optional flags and aren't quite "stable" yet. Noise suppression — an optional flag to reduce ambient sounds recorded by the microphone, handy for Meet and Zoom calls — was originally planned to land as part of Chrome OS 98, but it has been pushed to a later release.
Originally, we thought Chrome OS 98 would roll out on February 3rd, but Google held back the stable release, even though there weren't any bugs labeled as serious enough to hold the release back.
Though we had hoped Chrome OS 98 might deliver the subtly new Chrome logo, our own testing seems to show it's still using the old one — admittedly, you'd be hard-pressed to tell the difference. I expect Google will hold the new logo and most big new features in the next few releases for the much more marketable Chrome OS 100 release.
Chrome OS 98 is currently rolling out to several popular devices, including the company's own Google Pixelbook, though not the Pixelbook Go just yet.