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If you’ve been around Chrome OS as long as we have, you probably share the sentiment of many about the Files App on your Chromebook. When Chrome OS was in its infancy, the simplistic “Downloads” folder and mounted Google Drive was really all you needed to organize files on a device that was designed to live in the cloud. With the inclusion of Android applications and now Linux, file management has become a bit of a hot mess but Google is putting in work to fix the problem. Linux gets its own folder, some Android applications mount themselves as drives and developers have even created a dynamic “recent files” section at the top of the Files App.
As more and more users take to their Chromebooks for video meetings, online learning and content creation, one feature that feels like a blatant oversight is a Camera folder. Most of us that use our phones to take photos have specific locations where our images and videos live. Whether you use the stock gallery on your phone or leverage Google Photos as your default file location, you probably know exactly where to look for files created by your camera. For Chromebooks, images and videos taken with the webcam filter right into the Downloads file with everything else. Not a problem if you are using a photo immediately after you’ve taken it. However, if you have a lot files on your device, it doesn’t take long for these pics and videos to get lost in the shuffle.
Camera Folder
A recent change discovered by Chrome Story has now made its way to the Canary channel of Chrome OS and soon your Chromebook’s camera files will have their own dedication folder. The flag, chrome://flags/#files-camera-folder, is disabled by default but turning it on creates a nested Camera folder under the My Files section of the Files App. The first time you launch the camera with the flag enabled presents a pop-up notification letting you know that your saved camera files have moved.
This may seem like a minor update in the grand scheme of things. However, with the growing popularity of Chromebooks and so many new users making the switch, the Camera folder will be another step in making the onboarding process as smooth as possible. When you take a photo or make a video, you expect the files to be saved in a camera-related folder. Now, that’s exactly what will happen.
