Support our independent tech coverage. Chrome Unboxed is written by real people, for real people—not search algorithms. Join Chrome Unboxed Plus for just $2 a month to get an ad-free experience, access to our private Discord, and more. Learn more about membership here.
START FREE TRIAL (MONTHLY)START FREE TRIAL (ANNUAL)
Right on schedule, ChromeOS 111 has begun its roll out to users around the globe. A quick glance at the very useful cros.tech website shows that most late-model devices should have already received the update. The only major exception are 12th Gen Intel Chromebooks. This isn’t unusual as the newest CPUs often get held back to ensure that no bugs rear their ugly heads unexpectedly. That said, you can check for the update by clicking the system tray at the bottom right of your screen, clicking the gear icon and selecting “About ChromeOS” from the left-hand menu.
This update arrives on the heels of the Chrome 111 for Desktop release and like it, is a bit thin in the features departments. You can read about what’s new in Chrome 111 here. While this update to ChromeOS may be light, it does bring one feature, in particular, we’ve been looking forward to for months. That feature is Bluetooth Fast Pair.
Fast Pair
Did I say months? We’ve actually been tracking Fast Pair for Chromebooks since 2018 but it wasn’t until officially announced until last month. At that time, the quick connect feature for Bluetooth devices was labeled as “coming soon.” This week, years of development have come to fruition and Fast Pair is officially available on ChromeOS 111.
In case you didn’t now, Fast Pair gives you the ability to quickly pair compatible Bluetooth devices with just a single click on your device. The technology has been available on Android devices since it launched with the Pixel 2 back in 2017. Since that time, the list of compatible devices has expanded exponentially and many earbud and hearable devices with late-model SoCs have the feature baked right in.
With the Bluetooth enabled on your Chromebook, you simply have to turn on your compatible Bluetooth device and your Chromebook should prompt you to connect to the device with one click. Note that your Chromebook does need to support background scanning. As with any Fast Pair device, you will now be able to quickly move your earbuds or audio device between your different hardware with ease.
This is the only “official” update announced with the release of ChromeOS 111 but as our friend Kevin C. Tofel discovered, there are some other changes that we’ll cover tomorrow after I’ve had some time to poke around the update. Like its desktop counterpart, the ChromeOS 111 update also arrives with a slew of security patches and updates which you can read about on the Chrome Release Blog.
