Have you ever used your laptop or desktop to look up a business’s phone number, then manually dial that number on your phone? Some Googlers are looking to simplify this minor inconvenience with a potentially upcoming click-to-call feature that works between desktop and Android Chrome.
According to a set of new code changes published this week under the name “OneChrome,” some Googlers would like to make it possible for tel: links on the internet to be more useful when not browsing from mobile.
Right now, such links attempt to use whatever the closest thing your computer has to a telephone app is. For example, Chrome OS offers to open tel: links with the Google Contacts app.
With OneChrome, you would be able to register your Android devices from Chrome for Android, then any time you clicked a tel: link from desktop, a prompt will appear offering to send that number to your phone. From your phone, you’ll then see a notification containing the sent phone number and a call button.
Despite the amount of evidence in code that this click-to-call functionality is well in the works, I can still only call it a “potential” feature. The reason for this is that it seems to have been built for the purpose of a “hackathon” or an internal coding event.
During such hackathons, developers work on new projects that are more about doing something fun or showing that a particular thing is even possible, more so than doing it in the rigid way most code changes need to be written. These Googlers chose to spend their hackathon time on click-to-call, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it will ever see the light of day.
9to5Google’s Take
Google is constantly looking for ways to further unify their different platforms, so a simple way to quickly share information like phone numbers from desktop to Android would make perfect sense.
What do you think, would you use such a click-to-call feature if it ever did launch in Chrome?
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