All the ways the new split-screen mode in ChromeOS 128 is awesome

I’ll be honest, I had no idea the ChromeOS 128 update was going to be this fun! In addition to the new features announced officially from Google’s own channels, I’ve already stumbled across a couple new discoveries on my own. One of those – the new split screen feature – just keeps getting better the more I use it.

While the animations and fluidity have been wildly improved, there are more tricks to this updated feature in ChromeOS than I initially understood. One of those new abilities (pinned windows in overview) was brought to light in the release notes, but another I stumbled on this morning made me even happier! All-in-all, this is easily one of my favorite productivity updates in a long time for Chromebooks. Let’s take a look at all this new split-screen feature is capable of.

Better, smoother animations

First up – and probably most important – is the animation handling. When resizing these snapped windows, things are just ultra-smooth now. Even the way things resize on each side of the split makes more sense and just feels more controlled and buttery.

I know the team has been working on this for quite some time, and I’m glad to see that work paying off. Being able to resize snapped windows without tons of animation jank is a big deal, and I’m very happy with how well it’s all working right now.

Simplified size adjustments

In the same way, I’m very happy about the way you adjust snapped window sizes now. For many, many years, this process required hovering over the spot where the snapped windows meet, waiting for a small button to pop up, and then dragging that button left or right to resize things.

Now, with this new setup, you can grab the divider bar at any point on its vertical axis and resize both windows at once to your heart’s content. It’s far simpler to use and way more intuitive for users; and it’s a big win in my book.

Side-by-side pinning in Overview mode

Taking a page from other OS implementations of this same thing, ChromeOS now treats your split-screen windows as a single entity when in overview mode and when moving between Virtual Desks. After all, if you went to the trouble of arranging them just the way you wanted, it only makes sense that they’d travel together, right?

So, once you have two windows snapped to each side of your screen and have them resized the way you like, you can go into overview mode and instead of those windows scattering with the rest of your open stuff, they will stay together for a bit more visual clarity. And if you want to drag them to a different Virtual Desk, they stick together for that as well.

Window quick swap

Finally, in a bit of a surprise for me this morning, I learned there’s even a quick swap functionality at play here. Say you snap your windows and resize them, but then realize it makes more sense for them to be on the opposite sides you originally set them up on.

I had this exact thing happen this morning, and my first instinct was to think you know, on my Galaxy Z Fold 5, I can just tap that divider bar and choose to swap my open apps with one another. So, I right-clicked on the divider bar with no luck. I then wondered about a double-click. And it worked!!

Anywhere along the divider bar works, and with a simple double-click, your open windows will quickly swap sides with one another, maintaining their sizes and moving to their new home with a swift, reassuring animation. It’s awesome!

And with that, I think I’ve tapped out all this new feature is capable of at the moment. Snapping windows and split-screen setups have been relatively helpful in the past, but with this latest upgrade, I think I’ll be taking advantage of them a whole lot more moving forward. It’s a bit of an unexpected add-on for sure, and I’m really loving it right now. Hope it’s helpful for you, too!