ChromeOS 117 rolling out Material You redesign, updated Quick Settings, and much more

Google is rolling out ChromeOS 117, and it’s a very big update for Chromebooks that adds Material You, as well as other usability enhancements.

The Material You redesign starts in Quick Settings. Instead of each control being placed in a circle, rounded rectangles are now in use for a grid layout. There’s Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Nearby Share, Cast Screen, and VPN, while Screen capture and Do Not Disturb are given smaller cards. Tapping lets you access more inline settings, with Google touting the “bigger buttons, less pagination, and a separate notification panel.”

You’ll then find a volume slider with a Live Caption button with a tap letting you make more adjustments. Then there’s brightness and Night Light with the full panel letting you turn on/off the Dark theme.  

The bottom row has a power button that opens the Power off, Restart, Sign out, and Lock menu, while you get battery and time remaining, as well as a shortcut to the full Settings app, at the right.

Moving left of the shelf is the date, with ChromeOS 117 updating that Calendar View with a “Join” video call button for upcoming meetings. There’s also now support for multi-day events.

Next to that is the aforementioned notifications section with its new feed. You’ll also find a camera and microphone privacy indicator when either are actively being used. In a future update, you’ll be able to toggle on/off access, like on Android, but until then it’s just a green status dot.

Besides the browser being updated with Material You, Google is now applying Dynamic Color theming based on your wallpaper. Like on mobile, this includes the ability to choose one of four accent colors – though you can turn it off entirely for “more basic neutral colors” – that also adapt to the system light/dark theme. You control this from the Wallpaper & style app, which can be accessed by right-clicking on the desktop. 

Similarly, ChromeOS 117 adds built-in color correction settings:

Go to ChromeOS Accessibility settings under Display and Magnification to enable color filters for protanopia, deuteranopia or tritanopia, or to view the display in greyscale. Users are given a slider to customize the filters’ intensity to meet their needs.

In settings, you’ll also find Adaptive Charging. This is not available on all devices as of today. If supported, going to Settings > Device > Power will let you control the capability:

Devices with Adaptive Charging enabled via Settings charge to 80% and then complete charging to 100% based on an ML model’s prediction for when the user will unplug their device. Reducing the time a device spends at 100% charge helps preserve the battery’s health and ability to hold a charge over the lifetime of the device.

Other notable updates include:

• The ability to search for GIFs in the emoji picker 
• “You can now listen to audio from an Android app and the web at the same time without one pausing the other.”
• Time-lapse video recording in the Camera app
• Besides accessing the Clipboard with Launcher + V, it will also appear in the right-click menu as “Paste from clipboard.”  
• “When users search for the status of their OS version, battery, RAM, storage, or CPU, in Launcher, they can now see that information previewed in the search results.”
• “Improved Vietnamese Telex and VNI input method experience with extra advanced features such as shortcuts. Fixed flexible diacritic insertion issues so the behavior is consistent.”

ChromeOS 117 with Material You is rolling out over the coming days and weeks.