For me, Chrome OS serves the purpose 99.99% of the time. On a rare occasion, (and I mean as rare as a hen’s tooth) I need to use another platform. In the past year, I have used a Mac twice. Once to set up a clients email on their device and the other to check a Safari-specific CSS issue. Both instances really didn’t pertain to my personal use.
That’s not to say there aren’t features I would love to see come to Chromebooks. Every week we find more and more additions to our favorite OS that make it more appealing to the masses.
For the power-user or business types, the Beta channel of Chrome OS has revealed a new feature that could make the Files App a lot more useful.
If you work on a team, utilize a lot of storage for work or just store a lot of data, Google Drive can be an indispensable tool for archiving and managing stored files. But, handling files from Drive on your Chromebook can be tricky if you are trying to convert them into a .zip format.
Currently, opening a zipped file from Drive via the files app works and you will get a mounted file just like you’d expect. However, zipping files from Drive requires you to move the filed to local storage, zip them, then move the archived files back to Drive.
A new feature in the chrome://flags
page will soon allow you to zip files directly from Drive.
ZIP archiver for Drive Chrome OS
The flag is currently in the Stable channel but I had to move to Beta to get it to work. Once enabled, right clicking on a file will now allow you to choose from available archiving apps including Chrome OS native .zip archiver.
The description of the new feature is listed below. You can check it out for yourself by heading over to the Beta channel of Chrome OS.
Enable the ability to archive and unpack files on Drive in the Files app #enable-zip-archiver-on-file-manager
Yet another seemingly insignificant feature that is making Chrome OS more useful every day. What new feature would you like to see come to Chromebooks in the future? Drop a comment below and get the conversation started
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