Here’s our first look at the new Chrome OS animated screensaver feature

Thanks to Kevin Tofel over at About Chromebooks, we now have our very first look at the animated screensavers Google recently promised us that would eventually make their way to the new Personalization Hub.

After updating his Acer Spin 713 to Chrome OS Dev Channel 100 – the first three-digit version of Google’s operating system – he was met with a new setting to enable the screensaver you see below. In order to get this working though, he also had to enable a new Chrome developer flag called Ambient Mode Animation.

Launch the Lottie animated ChromeOS Screensaver

Launches the animated screensaver (as opposed to the existing photo slideshow) when entering ambient mode. Currently, there is only one animation theme available (feel the breeze). – Chrome OS

#ambient-mode-animation

As we previously discussed, Google is currently utilizing a web-based tool called Lottie. In the future, it may be possible for users to upload their own GIF or something to make their own screensaver, but at this time, the only one available is called “Feel the Breeze”, and looks like six polaroid photos hanging on a line blowing in the wind.

What’s super interesting is that even in its earliest form, the animated screensaver for Chrome OS is taking the user’s photos from a Google Photos album they specify and plugging them into the polaroids in real-time. As you can see in the video, our Google Photos do currently populate the frames out of the box, which is a very exciting start.

I know many of you previously expressed interest in animated backgrounds for your Chromebook, and it’s long since been something customers have asked me about in stores, so I believe that as far as personalization features go for Chrome OS, this is going to be a hit.