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

I am so glad that we are finally able to talk about the new Chromebook Plus features the ChromeOS team introduced at the very-cool event they held recently in New York City. We’ve known about many of these features and the new hardware that will showcase it for a little while at this point, so I’m really excited to be able to share everything Google announced at the event with you all today.

A quick caveat on this post and the hardware-focused one we’re putting out today: both of these initial posts/videos are simply meant to introduce you all to the new software and hardware arriving today and some other goodies Google has planned for the coming weeks for Chromebooks. We’ll dive into all these new features and obviously into all the new hardware in dedicated videos

Now, on to the new stuff. There were tons of software announcements made – some that we’ve heard about before and some that were brand new – so let’s quickly chat about each of them. Our video for this post is coming soon and will be added here in the next day or so.

New AI features for Chromebook Plus

As everything else does these days, the new ChromeOS features start with AI. Many of these features were teased at the October Chromebook Plus event, but this time around, they are all arriving today on Chromebook Plus devices.

And the first is Help Me Write. As we’ve seen on the Chrome browser for a bit leading up to this event, the idea of Help Me Write is simple enough: bring a bit of AI help right where you need it across the OS. Wherever you are on your Chromebook, you can summon Google’s Help Me Write to get inspiration or reword a post, email, note, or just about any block of text you can think of.

Next up is the new 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 backgrounds for their devices. And for video background, it means you can create interesting backdrops that are delivered at the device level and work on any video chat service you choose to use. Whether that is 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 Magic Editor for Google Photos on Chromebook Plus. Simply open the photo you want to edit in Google Photos, hit the Magic Editor button, and you can circle objects to reposition and resize them, and even improve lighting, backgrounds, and the sky for your Google Photos collection.

The last big AI announcement is the inclusion of Gemini right on your shelf starting with ChromeOS 125. Similar to what you get at the website for Gemini Chat, you’ll now have a dedicated PWA version pinned right to the shelf for quick queries about anything you can think to ask. From image generation to document creation to coding help, Gemini will be at your fingertips on a Chromebook moving forward.

Gemini Advanced for free for the first year

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

The ChromeOS team was clear on one thing with this event: AI at a device level should be for everyone and you shouldn’t have to pay north of $1000 to get it. Was that a clear dig at the new AI PCs announced by Microsoft the week prior? Sure it was, but the message rings clear. With new Chromebook Plus devices starting at $349, Google is serious about getting devices in people’s hands that leverage AI throughout the OS at prices that don’t hurt so much at the register.

There’s more than just new AI features, here, however, so let’s talk through some of those as well. Google Tasks is coming 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 Game Dashboard is also launching to make gaming possible on non-touch Chromebooks with button mapping and while also giving users the ability to record gaming sessions and share those recordings with ease.

Coming-Soon Features

Finally, Google shared a few features that are also in the coming soon phase, including the new Help Me Read feature with Gemini. Like Help Me Write, Help Me Read will quickly summarize text on the page to help you easily grasp and understand loads of content incredibly quickly.

There’s also a new feature on the way to help you pick up where you left off on your Chromebook. A new screen will soon surface when you open your Chromebook that will show you what you had opened previously: be it a bunch of Chrome tabs, windows, or apps. They didn’t go too deep into this feature, but if it is like other productivity options for Chromebooks (think Virtual Desks) when it launches, it will likely be incredibly helpful for your workflow.

One incredible new Accessibility feature

The last feature we got to see is one of the most impressive, allowing users with low mobility to still use a Chromebook using just their face. That’s right! I was able to toy around with controlling a Chromebook with only head movements and gestures on my face like winks, eyebrow raises, and opening my mouth. It’s seriously wild to experience, and pretty crazy that we’ll have it as a ChromeOS feature across the board later in the year.

This is A LOT. I know. That’s why we wanted to cover all of this on the surface and dive 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 sticking to their guns about keeping AI-powered computing in 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 aligned and introducing new features that are actually beneficial to end users. And that’s the type of ChromeOS news we get really excited for.