The Chromebook Files app is too simple: here are 5 things it can do to improve the user experience

Perhaps because I’ve become somewhat of a ‘power user’ on my Chromebook, I’ve started to see where many aspects of the user experience fall short. Having recently set up Ubuntu 23.10 on my desktop and processed large volumes of data, I’ve fallen in love with the files app named “Nautilus” on linux. It’s nowhere near perfect, and others certainly have better features and more robust tools, but compared to the Chromebook Files app, it’s still superior, in my opinion.

Today, I’m going to look at five things Google can do for the Chromebook’s Files app to make it better. Oddly enough, many users will never run into these issues or care about them, especially if they’re only moving around smaller documents or images, but it’s not well suited for “power users” (read: anyone trying to do a normal bulk of work) despite the fact that many Chromebooks now have NVME storage and here’s why.

1. Get info takes too long for larger files

First and foremost, you should know that you can right-click any file or folder (or press space bar with it highlighted or selected) and see the size of said file or folder in a pop up pane. Interestingly, this info segment has never really fully worked for me with any files larger than a gigabyte or two.

By calling up the panel and watching the file size section, it often gets stuck on the dotted animation displaying that it’s ‘calculating’ the size of its target. After several minutes of waiting, I decided to unmaximize the files app and have it fill the screen again. This fixed the problem and then showed the size of my 1TB folder on an external drive.

It would be great if Google put a bit more development weight into the Files app and how it calculates sizes, especially as more devices become powerful enough to do things like processing swathes of data on external hard drives. Let me know in the comments if you’ve had this problem or not!

2. You can’t collapse the sidebar when using split screen

The new Material You redesign of the Files app brought with it a problem I hadn’t realized until today – you can place two versions of the app side-by-side for split screen file management, but when you do, the hierarchy of each (the side panel with the folder structures) takes up more than half of the screen space they’ve allotted to them.

This makes it near impossible – and certainly impractical – to drag and drop files from one location to another. Google needs to allow this to be collapsible with a hamburger menu or something, or simply add tabs to the Files app so you can jump back and forth between two locations without a problem.

3. File transfers have no progress bar

Next, it’s weird to me that when you transfer files from one location to another, there’s no progress bar to show how long it will take until it’s complete! Yes, you get a toast notification at the bottom right of the app that shows a text-based indication of this in hours and minutes, but again, having come from Ubuntu where there’s a radial progress bar for this type of task, it seems absent and troublesome here.

4. Allow copy of file location

Ever since I started using Chromebooks, this next one has frustrated me. Coming from Windows 10, the ability to highlight and copy the exact file path of an image, document, or any other type of file was invaluable, especially while working across several file explorer locations and applications.

If you notice, Chromebooks simply don’t have this capability. It’s almost as though Google wanted to dumb down the experience, and well, that’s fine, but offering a toggle to enable this would have been nice. It’s as I said, Chromebooks have become much more versatile machines these days, and they just feel like they’re lacking some bare necessities this late in the game!

5. Allow single click instead of double

Last, but certainly not least, I’m annoyed by the fact that Chromebooks still only use a double mouse click for selecting and opening files and folders in the Files app. I’ve tinkered with the mouse settings for the entire device, and even for the files app preferences, and this simply does not exist.

I know that the idea behind the double click gesture is that people who are trying to select items to move them around or manage them don’t accidentally open them or navigate deeper, but not allowing this as a toggle as well is very frustrating.

Chromebooks were designed for the large middle

On Ubuntu and really any Linux distro, you can toggle this, and holding the Ctrl button will allow you to select items without opening them. Navigating around with one click is just so much less work, and it would be fantastic if Google began adding quality of life updates to its now polished and beautiful (and extremely newbie-friendly) operating system so that anyone who wants to do more with their device can, even if those who don’t have a handful of extra settings they shouldn’t mess with.

It’s clear that the tech giant has designed Chromebooks from the inside out to be as simple as possible, but I’m beginning to wonder if they’re too simple. I don’t think it’s too much to ask for Google to rethink some of these things, especially as it’s now gotten the first ten years of structure and polish out of the way, and I have a feeling we may start to see many of these features being added slowly over time.