Google has announced a number of new features for Chromebooks, including the company’s Live Captions feature that will be added to Chrome on “most” Chrome OS devices in the coming weeks. Once Live Captions are available, users can turn it on in the accessibility settings to get captions for all media with audio right in their browser. The feature was rolled out to Chrome on Windows, Mac and Linux in March.
Google is also improving the Chrome OS Launcher, which lets you search for files and apps, with some new features that let you do simple calculations and check the weather, word definition, and stock prices.
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The search giant is also adding a new Diagnostics app to Chrome OS that allows you to check and run tests on the health of your computer’s battery, CPU, and memory. That means if your battery doesn’t hold the charge for as long as you think it should, you can run a battery discharge test in the Diagnostics app to see if something is wrong.
The new launcher capabilities and the Diagnostics app are not yet available to a colleague of mine with Chrome OS, but Google tells The edge that the release is starting to roll out today. So if you don’t have the new features yet, you may have to wait a while to get the update.
Update April 21, 3:41 PM ET: Added information about Google’s rollout.