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The evolution of Google’s Material You design language on Chromebooks is continuing with a new adjustment to the Quick Settings area in the system tray, and it looks pretty awesome. This long-requested feature on Android phones has multiple quick settings buttons forced into smaller spaces to save room and make navigating them a bit easier. I know I’ve wished for this on my Pixel 6 Pro and Pixel 7 Pro for quite some time, and it looks like the adjustment is on the way for Chromebooks in the Canary Channel right now.
Simply put, this looks pretty awesome and makes so much sense. Quick settings are great and the tiled look introduced in Android 12 has a nice overall aesthetic, but for many functions, these buttons are simply too large. I like the uniformity, sure, but there’s no reason for the Screen Capture button (for instance) to take up so much space. Allowing for certain settings to be minimized cleans up the look and keeps users from needing to scroll to get to all the options available to them.
In general, Material You is a solid visual overhaul that I think we’re all ready to see on ChromeOS in its fullness. This slight change is a great move in the right direction and a clear indication that Google is getting ever closer to pushing this UI update to users sooner rather than later.
A similar update to the Media Hub, Phone Hub, Quick Files and app launcher will complete the transformation, and I’d imagine those changes aren’t that far off. When these tray adjustments do show up, they’ll join the theme picker in moving ChromeOS closer to a full-blown Material You look, and I think I speak for many when I say that I can’t wait for it. If development keeps up this sort of pace, it won’t be long.
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