Chrome OS is testing transparent context menus for a more polished look and feel

Chrome OS continues blazing its path toward maturity. Just recently, the Canary channel received an A/B test between two new dark mode boot screens, with one actually saying “ChromeOS” instead of just showing the Chrome browser logo. The new Productivity Launcher experiment is coming along nicely, adding color sorting, alphabetization, and more, and there’s even a new Calendar widget and notifications rework rolling out.

Today, I’m going to be discussing something seemingly insignificant, but that which shows the development team is on to adding polish to a wholly new Chrome OS in 2022. First spotted by C2 Productions on Twitter, Google seems to be testing transparent context menus on Canary and Dev 100. As you can see below, right-clicking on the wallpaper shows that the menu is no longer fully opaque, and it’s just a nice little touch as the wallpaper itself can be seen right through it.

While some may think this makes it much harder to read the text, I would argue that it depends on which wallpaper you’ve chosen. Obviously, the one I have in the demonstration is full of rocks, so it muddles clarity, but as a personal preference, I would rather have the more modern and professional look over an absolutely solid background any day.

I’m not yet certain when this will show up on Chrome OS Stable, but when it does, I don’t think Google will add an option for toggling it in the Settings app. This looks like one of those things that if implemented, will be universal and just something we all have to accept. Giving your feedback can affect change in Chrome OS though, so if you truly hate it, you can say something by tapping “Alt + Shift + i” on your keyboard.