Here’s a quick look at how the new Chromebook window-snapping feature will work

We’re still early-on in the development stages of the new window-snapping feature for ChromeOS, but it looks like some of the basic UI is already in place for users in the Developer Channel. While this first look (spotted by C2 Productions on Twitter) just shows off the way you’ll eventually choose to snap windows to certain places on the screen, we know there’s more coming with upcoming feature. Namely, snapped-window groups are on the way and could even show up alongside these partial window snapping abilities when they do finally launch down the road a bit.

What we’re looking at today is the foundation of all this productivity goodness and with it, a clear glimpse at how the UI will function in the future. As it stands right now, Chromebooks can only snap windows in 3 ways: left, right, or full-screen. There are numerous ways to do this, but the simplest way is to just drag a window to either the top, left, or right edge of your display and watch the window snap into place.

This new partial snap feature will give you a few more options and present them in a clear, concise way once it arrives. Instead of simply using the maximize button at the top of every window to go full-screen or back to a windowed state, hovering that button will soon bring up a variety of options for you to select from, along with a clear indication of what you can expect from the action.

It’s a pretty slick implementation and will likely only get better once it fully arrives. Hovering the maximize button will now give you a selection of half-screen, one-third-screen, full-screen, or always-on-top floating for your current window. After you hover, you don’t have to click anything or make any other motions: just hover over your selection, click it and watch the window move where you told it to.

I’d love to also see a 1/4 screen option like we see in Windows 11, but I’m still on the fence about how useful that window size actually is. Once you can snap your desired window sizes and save them as a group, it will only get better. For now, this only works in the Developer and Canary Channels of ChromeOS, but you can try it out if you want by entering either of those channels and enabling the #partial-split and #cros-labs-float-window flags. There’s likely more coming with this feature before it launches, but I’m already loving it. As always, we’ll keep an eye on it and expect to see it hit the Stable Channel before too long.