Chromebooks right now are a far cry from what they were in their initial stage. At first, their operating system was basically just a glorified browser, with most of its functionality web-based. Slowly, Google started adding other elements to it, such as Android app support and the ability to run Linux programs. And as the scope of Chrome OS has expanded, so has Google's vision for the platform. Its next step seems to be gaming, as new code changes hint at full RGB support for keyboards, because we all know the more RGB you have on your computer, the better your frame rates will be.

You can already play a lot of games on your Chromebook. Thanks to the Google Play Store, you have a whole bunch of Android titles at your disposal, while the presence of platforms like Google Stadia and GeForce Now help you play bigger, more demanding games. But an effort to bring the full Steam platform to Chromebooks has been ongoing for some time, with a new Linux container codenamed Borealis as the foundation. Right as that's being finalized, gaming-focused Chromebooks could very well grace the market.

A new feature flag spotted on the Chromium Gerrit (via 9to5Google) that enables "RGB keyboard support on supported devices" hints at the presence of RGB keyboards on future Chromebooks. RGB jokes aside, it's definitely something that's not a thing outside of the gaming niche — many Chromebooks are equipped with backlit keyboards, but that's different from an RGB keyboard. Here, each key might be individually customizable, and Chrome OS could even get a feature to tweak your RGB settings down the road.

9to5Google also notes that rather than this being a generic feature for USB accessories, it's actually something that's being prepared for a select few unreleased devices, further adding fuel to the fire. In particular, at least three hardware codenames are present in the Chromium code — Vell, Taniks, and Ripple. Vell is being created by Quanta, an ODM making Chromebooks for a handful of brands, and the original reporting seems to think it could be related to HP and its OMEN sub-brand thanks to an employee connection, as the most frequent contributor to Vell's development also seems to have been tasked with recent HP laptops.

Taniks, on the other hand, is made by LCFC, a company seemingly related to Lenovo, so we might also see a Lenovo Legion-branded Chromebook soon, if those hints are anything to go by. Finally, Ripple is mentioned as a "sub-board" and seems to be the internal codename for a detachable keyboard; maybe we'll also see a gaming tablet similar to the Asus ROG Flow Z13. The first two devices should be powered by Intel's 12th gen Alder Lake chips, while we don't know much about the latter just yet.

Maybe Google will get more vocal about its plans to release gaming notebooks very soon. Borealis was already pretty close to primetime last month, so maybe it won't be much longer.