Chromebooks are set to get stylus preference settings in an upcoming update

Stylus pens and Chromebooks have been partnered up for quite some time now. Since all the way back in 2017 with the first pen-equipped Chromebooks – the Samsung Chromebook Plus and Pro – we’ve seen an explosion of devices that now come with pen support. Much of that is due to the wide adoption of the USI (Universal Stylus Initiative) protocol with many Chromebooks across multiple models and manufacturers all delivering USI support for the past few years.

And this has led to the practice of consumers buying the pen they like and basically being able to use it with whatever Chromebook they have now or in the future. Like a mouse, keyboard, or earbuds, your USI pen can travel with you between devices. But unlike those devices, there are no settings for pens in ChromeOS and no way to change any of their behavior. At least not yet.

According to a new commit, it looks like stylus-specific settings are now on the way to ChromeOS. How those settings will actually impact the use of your stylus remain to be seen, but I could imagine things like pressure sensitivity, tilt controls, and extra button option could be among the settings that may be adjustable once this change arrives.

In a similar fashion, Chromebooks used to be unable to adjust basic trackpad settings and until recently, you had zero control over the firmness of haptic trackpads. Those options have now become part of the general ChromeOS experience, and it seems that we’ll be getting used to some sort of USI pen settings in the future as well.

This should mean USI pen makers can feel a bit more free in the future with adding special features and more buttons in their pens. If the end user can define some of those actions directly from their Chromebook settings, it will only make the overall pen experience better over time. But this is a brand-new commit, so it could be a little bit before we see what exactly this all does and even longer before we see manufacturers building pen experiences to take advantage of it. But rest assured, we’ll be keeping an eye on it.