ChromeOS 122 is here and continues the trend of ghost “new” features

To say I’m a bit aggravated right now would be an understatement. The past few ChromeOS updates have arrived with disparate messaging, unclear feature additions, and flat out ghost features that are announced and (mostly) delivered weeks later. The trend continues with ChromeOS 122, unfortunately, and though I’m glad to have finally found a spot where Google gives us some release notes on day 1 of an update, these “new” features arriving at unforeseen times is getting a little old.

A better, clearer home for ChromeOS update notes

I’ll start with some good stuff. It seems the ChromeOS team is now landing update notes on the ChromeOS Dev website. It would seem this has been happening for quite some time, though this is the first update I’ve seen with update notes on the ChromeOS Dev site. I’m unsure if they added them recently and back-dated the posts or if I’ve simply never seen them before – but I’m very glad they are here.

With a 4-week update cycle, things move fast, and having a spot to check that comes directly from the ChromeOS developer team makes total sense. For update notifications prior, there has always been the Chrome Releases Blog and eventually the team posts some new features in the Chromebook Help Commnuity, but these update notes on the ChromeOS Dev site make the most sense, and I’ll be referencing them from here on out.

“New” features that are largely not here for users

Now, on to the same aggravations I’ve had for the past few updates. You’ll see in the update notes that we should have the new Battery Saver feature as a part of your ChromeOS experience, along with the new Generative AI features Google recently released to the Chrome browser. While I’d love to play with the AI-driven tab organizer, theme builder, and “Help me write” features, none of these announced features are actually available on any Chromebook I’ve updated thus far. And one of the “new” features in those same release notes is the Global Media Player that was updated across the board for everyone in ChromeOS 121 a full week ago.

To be fair, a truly new feature that seems to have arrived with ChromeOS 122 is the ability to trim Screencasts on a sentence-by-sentence basis, and I can confirm that I was not able to do this in ChromeOS 121 before taking the update. Though a lot of people may not use the powerful Screencast feature too often, this new feature really takes granular editing to the next level and is very well done. This is what I’d love to see with all the rest of the promised features on update day.

Complexities that are not necessary

So what is going on, here? Why are we getting “new” features that either existed prior or are simply vaporware upon update? I have no clue, and the fact that we have a 4-week update cycle these days makes this even more strange. In the simplest terms I can muster: if a feature isn’t ready to package in the main update when it becomes available, why not just put it in the next one. It’s only 4 weeks away!

With that simple system, we could get to the place where updates make far more sense for end users. I get messages and emails after most updates of late with questions about why this person didn’t get this feature or why one person is seeing a new feature weeks ago and another still has yet to get it. As someone who thinks about and deals with Chromebooks every single day, not even I have an answer on this sort of thing because it frankly doesn’t make a lot of sense.

And if “new” features are to be rolled out on an account basis, Google needs to just tell us this is the case. I’d be far less frustrated if the “new” features in ChromeOS 122 were set for a slow roll-out over the next week or so. There’s no indication of this, though, and at some point I’m hoping I’ll eventually get the promised updates without any real assurance that is the case at all. As a Chromebook user, it is confusing and frustrating.

I don’t pretend to know all that goes into a ChromeOS update rolling out, but I know this much: if an update is listed with certain features, that update should ship with those features. If Google needs more beta testers, they need to ask for them and encourage users to try flags and go to the Beta Channel if that’s what it takes. At the end of the day, Chromebook users buy these devices to simplify their computing, and shipping an update that has features that may or may not actually show up only serves to muddy waters that just should not be muddied. I really hope this changes in the near future.