You may soon be able to personalize your Chromebook with an animated screensaver

Dinsan over at Chrome Story spotted something truly remarkable that the Chrome OS developer team is working on – animated screensavers for your Chromebook! According to the Chromium Gerrit that he found, Google will be utilizing something called ‘Lottie’ – a web-based platform for animation creation to bring your screensaver to life.

At this time, you can just and only add images from the Google Arts and Culture gallery or Google Photos. A Chrome OS developer flag will be present for the duration of this test and build-out, and If and when this feature goes live, you’ll likely be able to choose from a new selection of moving images for your display.

As you may expect, this will be available via the new Personalization app on Chromebooks via the Canary and Dev channels first. Personalization is a new app redesign for what was previously called ‘Wallpapers’. Right now on Chrome OS Canary, you can see that a newly added light and dark theme toggle and the wallpaper picker have filled out the previously empty Personalization app.

At first, and at least just for the initial build of the feature, ”Feel the Breeze” will be the only named screen saver available. I wonder if at a later point in time, Google may add a full-on screen saver creation tool similar to what it did for profile images on Gmail.

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).

Here’s the flag that will soon exist – The ‘Personaliation Hub UI’ flag already previously hinted at screen saver integration.

Over on Google’s Chromebook Help page, ‘Personalization’ is already listed as an official thing, even though it has yet to be fully implemented. Check out the step-by-step guide below for changing your screen saver for Chrome OS – it is, in fact, a Personalization feature!

Change the screen saver background

1. At the bottom right, select the time.
2. Select Settings .
3. On the left, click Personalization  Screen saver.
4. To turn on the screen saver, on the right, select the switch.
5. To choose an album to set as your screen saver, select Google Photos or Art gallery.

Tip: If you turn on the screen saver, the display stays on while the device charges. Your Chromebook doesn’t go to sleep.

Chromebook Help