Split-screen Android apps could soon arrive on Chromebooks

Chromebook Android

Chrome OS is testing a new feature which allows for the user to run two Android apps side-by-side in split-screen mode (or a Chrome OS app alongside an Android app).

Spotted by Chrome Unboxed, the feature has arrived in Chrome OS Canary – the early cutting-edge test version of Google’s operating system – and it’s designed for tablet or detachable Chromebooks.

The tech site showed the system working without any apparent hitches on a Samsung Chromebook Pro in tablet mode, as you can see in the video below.

As you can see, it’s easy to run a pair of apps together, and adjust the slider in the middle of the screen to determine how much real-estate each app gets.

Coming to Chromebooks soon?

Chrome Unboxed seems optimistic that we could see this feature make its way to the full release version of Chrome OS quite swiftly, because there are some fresh tablets and detachable 2-in-1s expected to arrive soon, and this would obviously be a major boon for those devices.

Of course, features that appear in Canary are still in the early testing phase, so it remains to be seen whether split-screen Android apps will arrive in time – fingers crossed and all that. Do note that even when the feature goes live, the apps in question must support split-screening themselves (and not every piece of software does).

Here’s another interesting potential Chromebook development we spotted last month: the possibility of sideloading Android apps from outside the Play store without using developer mode is reportedly in the works (and coming to business users first).

Via Engadget

Darren is a freelancer writing news and features for TechRadar (and occasionally T3) across a broad range of computing topics including CPUs, GPUs, various other hardware, VPNs, antivirus and more. He has written about tech for the best part of three decades, and writes books in his spare time (his debut novel - 'I Know What You Did Last Supper' - was published by Hachette UK in 2013).

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