2024 Chromebook Showcase: Google announces a flood of great new features

I’m so happy that we can finally talk about the new Chromebook Plus features that the ChromeOS team introduced at the very cool event they recently held in New York City. We’ve known about many of these features and the new hardware that will show them off for a while now, so I’m really excited to be able to share everything Google announced at the event with you all today.

A quick note of caution about this post and the hardware-focused post we’re releasing today: both first posts/videos are simply to introduce you all to the new software and hardware arriving today and some other goodies Google has planned for Chromebooks in the coming weeks. We dive into all these new features and of course all the new hardware in special videos

Now on to the new stuff. There have been a ton of software announcements – some we’ve heard before and some were brand new – so let’s quickly talk about each of these announcements. Our video for this post is coming soon and will be added here the next day or so.

New AI features for Chromebook Plus

Like everything else these days, the new ChromeOS features start with AI. Many of these features were teased during the Chromebook Plus event in October, but this time they’re all arriving on Chromebook Plus devices today.

And the first is Help me write. As we’ve seen in the Chrome browser leading up to this event, the idea of ​​Help Me Write is simple enough: put a little AI help right where you need it, across the operating system. No matter where you are on your Chromebook, you can call up Google’s Help Me Write to get inspiration or rephrase a message, email, note, or virtually any block of text you can think of.

Next is the new thing AI-powered wallpapers and video backgrounds. Again, these are all OS-level features that work across the board. For wallpapers, this means users will see new guided prompts to create unique, one-of-a-kind wallpapers for their devices. And for video background, this means you can create interesting backgrounds that are delivered at the device level and can work on whatever video chat service you want to use. Whether that’s Google Meet, Zoom or WhatsApp, your unique AI-created video background works wherever you chat. It’s a pretty cool trick.

Google also debuted the new one Magic Editor for Google Photos on Chromebook Plus. Simply open the photo you want to edit in Google Photos, press the Magic Editor button and you can circle objects to move and resize them, and even change lighting, backgrounds and sky for your Google Photos collection to improve.

The last major AI announcement is the inclusion of Gemini right on your shelf starting with ChromeOS 125. Similar to what you get on the website for Gemini Chat, you now have a special PWA version pinned right to the shelf for quick questions about anything you can think of. From image generation to document creation and coding assistance, Gemini is now at your fingertips on a Chromebook.

Gemini Advanced is free for the first year

And that brings me to probably one of the biggest announcements made at the event: Gemini Advanced is free for a whole year for Chromebook Plus users. Normally $19.99 per month, the Google One AI Premium plan is included free for 12 months for new Chromebook Plus users, and it also includes Gemini Advanced, 2TB Drive storage, and Gemini for Docs, Sheets, Slides, and Gmail .

The ChromeOS team was clear about one thing with this event: Device-level AI should be accessible to everyone and you shouldn’t have to pay more than $1000 to get it. Was that an obvious dig at the new AI PCs Microsoft announced the week before? Certainly, but the message is clear. With new Chromebook Plus devices starting at $349, Google is serious about getting devices into people’s hands that use AI throughout the operating system at prices that won’t hurt as much at the checkout.

There’s more than just new AI features here, though, so let’s go through a few of those as well. Google Tasks comes to the Quick Settings Calendar area for easier task management. GIF recording is coming to the already excellent ChromeOS Screen Capture tool. And a new one Game Dashboard is also launching to enable gaming on non-touch Chromebooks with button mapping while allowing users to record gaming sessions and easily share those recordings.

Features coming soon

Finally, Google shared a number of features that are also in the coming phase, including the new ones Help me read feature with Gemini. Like Help Me Write, Help Me Read will quickly summarize the text on the page, allowing you to grasp and understand a large amount of content very quickly.

There’s also a new feature coming that lets you pick up where you left off on your Chromebook. When you open your Chromebook, a new screen will soon appear showing you what you had open previously: whether it’s some Chrome tabs, windows, or apps. They didn’t delve too deeply into this feature, but if it’s like other productivity options for Chromebooks (think virtual desks) when it launches, it’ll likely be incredibly useful for your workflow.

One incredible new accessibility feature

The last feature we saw is one of the most impressive, allowing users with low mobility to do so still use a Chromebook with just their face. That’s right! I could play with controlling a Chromebook using only head movements and facial gestures, such as winking, raising eyebrows, and opening my mouth. It’s really wild to experience, and pretty crazy that we’ll have it as a ChromeOS feature across the board later this year.

This is A LOT. I know. That’s why we wanted to cover all of this on the surface and delve deeper into many of these new features in the coming weeks. There’s so much to talk about, but one of the best parts of the presentation was the fact that Google is really committed to keeping AI-powered computing within a reasonable price range. The new hardware reflects this, and the new features introduced don’t feel like AI for AI’s sake. Instead, it feels like the ChromeOS team is clearly on the same page and introducing new features that actually benefit end users. And that’s the kind of ChromeOS news that gets us really excited.