A couple small, new additions we’ve found in ChromeOS 123

Just yesterday, we reported on the release of ChromeOS 123 and the handful of useful customization features that rolled out along with it this time around. And as I finished that post, I remarked that there’s a good chance we’d run into a few small, new features along the way as we always do, and I’ve already found two new things I think that are worth sharing that seem to have come along for the ride in ChromeOS 123.

Updated Virtual Desks Button

In the shelf, we’ve had the new Virtual Desks quick button for a few versions of ChromeOS at this point. We also saw that this area was set to get a nice visual update down the road, and it appears that the time is right now for this change to arrive. In testing all the new stuff for ChromeOS 123 yesterday, I completely overlooked this small-but-awesome addition, but I’m really glad it is here.

For those unaware, the Virtual Desks shelf button has been around for a bit to give you yet another way to see and move to your open Virtual Desks. Clicking the center of the button brings up a quick view of your desks while the arrows on either side of the pill-shaped button can quickly move you between them. It’s handy for those that would rather navigate with the mouse pointer, and it’s even nicer to use and look at with this update.

The new look makes it blend in to the Material You design of the OS much better and the persistent arrows give a nice nudge to users new and old that there’s something that can be done with this functional area to the left of their pinned apps; and I love it. It still accomplishes the same basic tasks, it simply looks better doing so.

A new toast notification for Multi-Paste

In the event that you don’t know about or use Multi-Paste, let me catch you up. This is one of my absolute favorite productivity features in ChromeOS and one that I sorely miss any time I’m forced to use something other than a Chromebook to get things done. By hitting LAUNCHER + V, you can pull up a list of the last 5 items you’ve copied for quick access when pasting.

It allows so many things to happen when moving fast across multiple input sources and I’ve grown to not only enjoy it, but rely on it quite heavily. In talking with Joe, it is one of the key features of ChromeOS that he misses most while editing video on the Macbook Pro we have in the office.

With ChromeOS 123, there’s a fun new pop-up toast notification that looks great and even has an eye-catching graphic that accompanies it to let users know that a far more powerful copy/paste function exists on their Chromebook. It’s a small nudge, but it really caught my attention the other day, and I’m hopeful it does the same for many users that still don’t leverage this amazing feature on their Chromebooks.

For now, that’s all I’ve found, but I suppose there are likely other little tweaks hiding here and there. Again, as we find them, we’ll let you know. And as always, we’re not far from the next iteration of ChromeOS with version 124 set to arrive by the end of the month. It moves fast, so we’ll try to keep up.