Chromebooks could get big productivity boost thanks to new ChromeOS update

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One of the most enticing features of the best Chromebooks is the simplicity and intuitive nature of the ChromeOS software. With one glance you can see all the essential apps and get situated on the device very quickly - even if you’re more used to using traditional Windows 11 laptops. Google has continued to invest time on improving the user experience, and it seems like a new, useful feature may be on the way for the Canary Build of ChromeOS 118 with new ‘glanceable’ widgets.

Android Central spotted a tweet by C2 Production that showcased an addition to the Calendar widget that allows you to interact with various lists within Google Tasks, Google’s task manager and to-do list software. In the screenshots and videos below from the tweet, you can see a Google Task widget pop up on top of the Calendar widget, broken up by the user's different task sections (school work, personal, etc).

.@michaelperrigo @kdhawan2000@9to5GoogleIt has already gotten MY Support. It has bugs that need to be sorted like the fact that it doesn't update quickly & also the inability to add tasks directly in the widgetBut for now, let me show you a small video on how this works: pic.twitter.com/gPtYbeNpIVAugust 13, 2023

With the new feature you can switch between different lists and tick off tasks as you complete them when the Google Task widget shows up. This could be a game-changer for students and professionals grinding through the day and working towards clearing their daily to-do list, as you can quickly cross off tasks and swap between them as needed.

The one unfortunate thing however, noted by C2 Production, is that at this time you can’t add new tasks through the widget, but instead will be redirected to the Google Tasks homepage to add a new task, which will then be reflected in the widget on your desktop. So it’s a little finicky at the moment, and hopefully, we’ll get a more streamlined experience with the proposed widget.

That being said, this is the Canary build of ChromeOS (an experimental version of Chrome aimed at web developers) so we may not even see this feature in any final builds and could be quickly removed.

Muskaan is TechRadar’s UK-based Computing writer. She has always been a passionate writer and has had her creative work published in several literary journals and magazines. Her debut into the writing world was a poem published in The Times of Zambia, on the subject of sunflowers and the insignificance of human existence in comparison. Growing up in Zambia, Muskaan was fascinated with technology, especially computers, and she's joined TechRadar to write about the latest GPUs, laptops and recently anything AI related. If you've got questions, moral concerns or just an interest in anything ChatGPT or general AI, you're in the right place. Muskaan also somehow managed to install a game on her work MacBook's Touch Bar, without the IT department finding out (yet).